After spending his entire run back in WWE on RAW, Johnny Gargano is heading back to NXT on WrestleMania 39 weekend in order to serve as Shawn Michaels' champion versus his greatest foe since The Undertaker, Grayson Waller. Finally, fans will get to see Mr. NXT back in the promotion he helped to champion for the latter part of last decade and, hopefully, he'll remind fans once and for all that he's one of the best in-ring competitors the WWE Universe has to offer.
Taking part in an interview on Busted Open Radio, Gargano was asked about why his run on RAW has yet to reach the same hype as his time as Johnny Takeover, and the gave a very interesting answer about just how different his main roster run has been versus his NXT heyday.
“You know how things go, man. You make the most out of the time you’re given, you make the most out of your opportunities,” Gargano said via Fightful. “I feel like I had a huge opportunity in the Elimination Chamber match, and I feel like I showed out in that one. I feel like I was able to get in there with a guy that I feel is probably the standard-bearer on our industry right now, Seth Rollins. I think he’s the tippy-top of the mountain, he’s where I want to be, and I hung toe to toe with him, and I showed the world that I can hang with him. So it’s one of those things where it’s all about time, it’s all about patience.
“I know a lot of people don’t want to be patient, they want it now. They want me to go out there and have 30-minute matches, 25-minute matches, do my TakeOver thing. It takes time, it takes equity. It takes getting this other audience that maybe doesn’t know about me, the casual fans we talk about all the time, in these buildings that, quite frankly, I haven’t been in before. A lot of these markets, I’ve never wrestled in, and they’re seeing me for the very first time. This whole past six months, I’ve wrestled in so many markets I’ve never been in before because… [in] NXT, they did the main markets, they did the hardcore wrestling towns. I do feel like it’s just time, it’s equity. As you know, it’s putting your time in, making the most out of the time you’re given, and that’s all you can do.”
You know, Gargano really makes an interesting point; despite working hundreds of matches in NXT, earning legendary status multiple times over, and becoming something of a hero to the fans who fill up the PC each week in Orlando, Gargano really hasn't wrestled to many of the audiences WWE travels to, at least during his run as a Superstar. Factor in the unfortunate reality that casual WWE fans by in large don't watch NXT, as the weekly numbers clearly show, and you have a Superstar who is both incredibly seasoned within the promotion and a relative newcomer who leaves some fans feeling like they aren't in on the joke when he gets up to shenanigans with Candice LeRae and Dexter Lumis.
Fortunately, Gargano is nicknamed “Johnny Wrestling” for a reason, so when he's given a chance to shine, he likely will.
Johnny Gargano isn't worrying himself with Vince McMahon's return to WWE.
Elsewhere in his interview on Busted Open, Gargano was asked about the return of Vince McMahon to WWE and how that could affect his run in the company, as he is notoriously a “Triple H guy.” For Gargano, it's all about controlling what he can control.
“You control what you can control right?” Gargano said via Wrestling Inc. “Everything else is outside my pay scale. Whatever happens with the company, I have no control over that. I can just control what I do in the ring most of the time, I can control what I do in the gym … my diet … my gear, things like that. Everything else, you want to try to have a headspace where you don't care about that sort of thing but it's hard. We all care a lot, we all got in this business because we care and we genuinely love it and want it to be great and we want to be great. And I'll never go a day in my life where I don't strive to be better than I was the day before.”
At the end of the day, that's the right mindset to have. If Mr. McMahon returns to creative power and Gargano's push continues under his eye then great. If not, well, he did draw interest from AEW as a free agent, maybe that would still exist in 2023.
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