Johnny Gargano Quotes

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.

I don't think I'd be in WWE, and I wouldn't be in NXT, if it wasn't for my time in EVOLVE and Dragon Gate USA and things like that.

For special wrestlers, there's somewhere else to go - as long as you're not brainwashed by that WWE mentality. There's other worlds out there; it's OK to switch around.

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

I like doing the shows with Ring of Honor, but I don't want to leave Japan.

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.

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

I do not see Dean Ambrose leaving WWE to go somewhere else.

It was a great ride, 10-time world tag team champion with my brother and then to work with Sheri Martell back in the days, you know, a dream come true.

Fortunately for me, I discovered Ring of Honor. And I saw guys who were much smaller in stature but were putting on these amazing matches that I had never seen in WWE before. So I thought, at the very least, I'd love the chance to be able to wrestle in a company like that someday.

Being in the Bullet Club is definitely a huge opportunity and guarantees more eyes on my work.

I wrestled Roddy quite a few times when he was first coming up in the business. I would go to Canada and wrestle up in that area, and you would be involved with him, too. Piper's a good guy.

There are ties that began when I was just a young kid trying to cut my teeth in the business. I would drive 14 hours to wrestle on a Ring of Honor show that I didn't even get paid 20 dollars for.

We value the independent wrestling scene, and it's our goal to strengthen it.

When I was a little kid, WWF was all I had access to. After a year or two when I found the indies and could watch wrestling live, it was just as big a deal to me as WWF.

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.

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

I had a long career that started when I was 17. I wrestled for 20 years, so people forget how long I actually wrestled for.

Promoters saw the potential in me and the value in me. It was because of companies like Evolve, PWG, Progress, and Beyond Wrestling. Those are the big ones that gave me a push and made my name worth something on the indies.

People try and make it a big deal, but a show's a show, work's work, if you haven't wrestled in New York in a couple months, it's always good to take a booking there because there's a lot of great wrestling fans up there.

I kind of miss that whole NXT thing. When I was there, it was Florida Championship Wrestling with Seth Rollins and the other guys who were there. I wrestled on, like, local-access Florida TV in front of 30 people. It was a tiny little situation.

I think NXT has opened up the doors for a lot of guys to come in and create different opportunities.

All of the Divas are given opportunities. It's kind of the way you go after them and what you do with them. I feel like I was able to seize the opportunity I was given, and now I am Divas champion.

There's a huge fan base behind NXT, which is cool because that opens up the door to younger talent that maybe at one point thought that it was impossible to ever get into WWE, but now, there it is.

I used to live in Philly, so I was in Baltimore a lot wrestling before I got to WWE, wrestling for different promotions.