“I'm not retired; I'm unemployed. That's what I keep saying. I see things on Tony Khan‘s TV show that appall me – I could help with that. I have been begging him for a job on every platform I can, and I want to know why he won't hire me. That's the next big news break.” – This story, detailed by Jesse “Road Dogg” James on Busted Open Radio as detailed by Wrestling Inc., shows where Billy Gunn's former buddy has been at since he was released from his WWE contract in January of 2022.
And yet, as crazy as it may sound, historically speaking, Road Dogg does know quite a bit about the inner workings of running a good professional wrestling show, as he's worked as a producer in WWE since 2011, when he was thrust into a backstage role. He's helped t0 book the shows, helped to book the matches, and even helped as a promo coach in the performance center, which makes a good bit of sense, as the Dogg used to stir crowds into a frenzy with his larger-than-life style and “Ladies and Gentleman” announcement.
While everything from The Attitude Era doesn't necessarily hold up, The New Age Outlaws were fun.
So naturally, when Road Dogg decided to speak up on the creative changes in the WWE Universe post-Vince McMahon's retirement on his Oh… You Didn't Know? podcast, it was going to be a must-listen show for fans looking to see what someone who has once been in the trenches for years thinks about the future. What fans maybe didn't expect, however, was to hear James speak out on none other than Johnny Gargano and how Paul “Triple H” Levesque's elevation could be good news for the cruiserweight's return and elevation moving forward.
Road Dogg thinks Triple H could make Johnny Gargano a star in the WWE.
For the longest time, fans theorized about how Johnny Gargano and his #DIY pal Tommaso Ciampa would fare on either RAW or SmackDown under Vince McMahon. Some thought the duo were simply too talented to get buried thanks to their NXT pedigree, while others worried that they would find themselves with a fate similar to either Keith Lee or Karrion Kross, aka losing everything that made them special before being released without so much as a second thought.
Well, as it turns out, fans no longer need to think about such a disastrous scenario, as Vince McMahon is gone and will all but certainly never be back. Better still, it looks like his son-in-law, Paul Levesque, has had a second thought or two, as he's made a point of bringing back many of these spurned NXT standouts from Karrion Kross to Dakota Kai, and has made a point of elevating the ones who remained on the main roster like Gunther and Ciampa with much better storylines than the ones afforded to them by Mr. McMahon.
And yet, Gargano and his The Way – and real-life – wife Candice LeRay remain unemployed. Sure, they're probably busy with a young child, but eventually, “Johnny Wrestling” has to return to the ring, right? Goodness, a week of AEW television doesn't go by without his name trending on Twitter between 8-10 pm EST on Wednesdays and on Fridays starting at 10. Fortunately, Road Dogg thinks Gargano is a good enough wrestler to be a fixture of Levesque's television program, as dictated by Fightful.
“Vince, and everybody kind of knows, had an idea of what his wrestler looked like and it was Hulk Hogan, it was The Rock, it was Stone Cold. It was big, brawny, attractive, or hideous, whatever it is, but a bigger guy. Hunter is more of a wrestlers’ guy, a wrestling guy. He likes people that can wrestle really well. Look, Johnny Gargano would never be on Vince’s show, but there's a good chance he's on Hunter's show, because he's really good at wrestling.
“I don't think [Vince McMahon and Triple H] see things that differently, I just think they see things — one was a promoter and then became the owner of a company and then one was just a top guy Talent who learned from the school of hard knocks by being a top guy and working under Vince as to how to make business decisions and some life decisions, too, I would imagine. so, I think they both have very similar leadership strategies and we'll get into that a little later but as far as talent, look, Vince likes a bigger guy and Hunter likes a better wrestler.”
You know what they used to say back in the day – you have to give the Doggie his due; his evaluation is dead on.
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