The former 3 time NXT North American champion and longtime NXT veteran talked about the reasoning behind his exit from WWE in late 2021
For the first time since his departure, Johnny Gargano has spoken in detail about his choice to leave WWE on The Sessions With Renee Paquette. Gargano felt that there was nothing left for him to achieve in the company and reluctantly rejected their final contract offer.
“I felt like I was in a good place. I had felt this way for a while to where I felt like I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish in NXT. It is kind of a scary thing to have a new baby on the way and decide I’m going to turn down this new contract that’s a good contract, a safe contract that you’re going to get money every single week coming in, to kind of go off and do your own thing.”
– Johnny Gargano
The former NXT champion also stated that he was very pleased with the way WWE treated him in his final weeks with the company.
“I was very lucky to be given that chance. It’s so funny because so many people thought that I had re-signed, obviously, because they were like “no one gets this treatment. I went and I sat down with one of the writers but all the words that came out were my own. I wrote my own thing. I wanted to thank people, I wanted to do things like that. I feel like I just have such a good relationship, a good rapport with everyone in NXT and everyone in WWE, in general.”
– Johnny Gargano
Although Gargano talked about how hard it was for him to leave the company, he stated that his mind was made up as far back as a year in advance.
“I kind of made my mind up a year in advance that this would be my last. I wasn’t leaving to go to any particular place. I kind of just felt like I needed to go because I felt like if you watch a TV show or if you watch anything in general, if you see the same character – obviously, I changed character, I turned heel, I did funny stuff, I did things like that here and there – but if you see the same person on TV for five years, six years, it gets stale. I believe that being off TV and being away makes people miss you and I think people need to have a chance to miss you.”
– Johnny Gargano
As of today, Gargano remains a free agent. But we can only assume that it won’t be much longer until he’s back in the squared circle.
H/T to F4WOnline for the transcription
