Johnny Gargano Quotes

I went from two-minute matches when I started with NXT to eight, to 10, to 12.

I trained at All Pro Wrestling in the U.S. Later, I signed up with the New Japan Pro Wrestling. Then WWE noticed me.

William Regal is one of my mentors, and I had been talking with him the whole time I have been away from WWE.

The fact that I'm still able to wrestle on the indies and yet still do my stuff in NXT, and the fact that I wrestled in front of 15,000 people at the Barclays Center at TakeOver, and then, the following weekend, I was still doing indie shows, is wild.

I did a year and a half of independent wrestling before I got into the WWE. It was nothing really. I didn't make the towns. I don't even say I was an indy wrestler.

Back in 2004 I trained at an independent wrestling school and performed in front of crowds of around 200, then I got signed to a contract with the WWE to continue my development.

My experience here at the WWE Performance Center has been amazing. I'm just looking forward to being here and learning as much as I can the time that I'm here. I've been a fan of the sport since I was a little kid, and now I get to participate in it.

I never was in a wrestling ring before I stepped foot into a WWE ring, so I am a product of NXT.

My career path is the best I could have hoped for, and that's thanks to independent wrestling and territories across the world.

I would hope to end my career here if it came down to it and take other roles with 'Lucha Underground.' I see a lot of the style I was raised on here, and I think I can help out with the young upcoming talent and hope to be around here as long as it lasts.

Being born into the business, I had the connections. A lot of guys aspire to be professional wrestlers, but you need to get trained the right way. And then, once you're trained, you need to get to that next level, and really, the WWE is the only place to do it.

I've had the opportunity to wrestle Daniel Bryan through several phases of his career, except for his time in WWE. What I remember is that he was great the first time I wrestled him, and he kept getting better every match afterward.

Was I a fan of WWE? Yeah, of course, but I knew it was not going to be a thing for me, until NXT came to the foreground and a lot of my friends who I was competing against on the independent scene were getting signed.

The fact is, there's a ton of opportunities out there now for professional wrestlers which, when I was coming through, weren't really there. The only game in town realistically was WWE, and it was very, very difficult to see yourself working anywhere outside of that.

The WWE have told me that if I ever want to become a wrestler, all I need to do is walk through the door, and they'll give me a job straight away.

Now I think a lot of wrestlers want to get signed so that way they can be with a company where they can learn, but they're really kind of looking for a contract, and I do think that makes sense.

I wanted to be a part of WWE and part of NXT first, as, if I went to 'Raw' or 'SmackDown' right away, I would always wonder what NXT would have been like.

I always wanted to be the worst wrestler on the shows I was on so I could just learn from the guys above me, and that's a great way to be in your first few years of wrestling.

I wrestled in Detroit many times before getting to WWE.

To me, OVW was one of my favorite periods in my career. I felt like I was on the greatest adventure of all time. I was there five months before WWE developmental moved down to Florida.

NXT is huge, being able to be on TV internationally is a big deal, as it means you don't have to work so hard to get noticed as opposed to FCW, Deep South Wrestling and OVW, which were all televised, but locally.

It's kind of a tricky subject because I had a great time in WWE. There were highs and lows, but I cut my teeth there. I met my wife there.

When I began in Ring of Honor, I was very fortunate to get on shows and get looked at and get the experience. I was working with a ton of guys who had more experience than me at the time, like AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels.

Dave Taylor, who was my tag partner in WWE, had a wrestling school close to where we both lived in Georgia for a while.

I think all The Shield boys will tell you we hold The Shield very dear to our hearts. That was our vehicle to where we are now, and to get out of developmental and out of that hot Tampa warehouse.