Gargano heaps praise onto the current product.
The first-ever NXT Triple Crown Champion is Johnny Gargano and currently, he’s a member of the SmackDown roster and a co-holder of the WWE Tag Team Championships.
Gargano guest appeared on Phil Strum’s Under the Ring podcast and spoke about his former home-brand. He discussed the pipeline of college athletes to NXT. He went on to praise the match that Sol Ruca and Kelani Jordan had at Heatwave.
He added that there’s a good mix of N.I.L. athletes and experienced talent on the roster. Gargano brought up the TNA partnership as well.
I love the (NXT) product. I think Shawn (Michaels) is absolutely killing it. He’s cooking up a quality show every Tuesday night. I’m a fan, I watch it every Tuesday and the things some of those athletes are able to do is absolutely incredible. I’ll just point to Sol Ruca and Kelani Jordan from the last show, the last big P.L.E. they did (NXT Heatwave). I thought those two absolutely tore it up and they had such a unique match that you don’t really see two women get a chance to do. But that just speaks to their talent and they’ve only been doing this for a short amount of time. So you can only imagine what that match is gonna be, say, two to three years down the line. That speaks to the talent that they bring in, the talent they recruit but also, the coaches in that building and the culture in that building to cultivate that talent. I believe, and I’m right there with you, that bringing in top-level athletes from all over the world that genuinely care about this, genuinely want to do this, want to be great at it, and then bringing it top-level independent talent to work with them. Top-level talent from TNA now as you can see. Who would have guessed that would even be a thing? That’s so crazy. That’s crazy to me (to) watch. Watching The Rascalz do a six-man tag on Tuesday is so freaking cool. But yeah, that just speaks to how the WWE is now though, right? Anything can happen. The doors are open and anything is possible, whether it’d be from a talent standpoint, whether it’d be from a production standpoint. They’re just trying all this stuff out and it’s working and it’s a great time to be, not just a wrestler, but also to be a wrestling fan.
As mentioned, Gargano is holding the WWE Tag Team Titles with his longtime partner, Tommaso Ciampa. This past April, they made their WrestleMania debut in a Ladder match. Gargano reflected on that experience:
It went by fast (WrestleMania debut). I’m not a guy — and I hate this about myself — I don’t live in the moment a lot. It’s one of those things where it all happens and then it’s like, ‘Oh, that was cool.’ But then, years down the line, I look back on it, I’m like, ‘Oh, that was actually very cool.’ I’m so busy living in it that I don’t take time to appreciate it. I’m trying to work on that more and more now. But, it’s still just one of my traits where I’m in the middle of something, I just don’t realize how big it actually is until it’s over… In like three years, I’ll be able to look back, ‘Oh, that was awesome. That was awesome.’
WWE is heading to Gargano’s home state of Ohio for their weekend of SummerSlam events in Cleveland.
A six-pack challenge tag match is going to air on the 7/26 Friday Night SmackDown to determine the next challengers to Gargano and Ciampa’s titles.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Under the Ring with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
