Johnny Gargano Recalls Random Call-Up To Raw In 2019, Says It Was His Call To Go Back To NXT

Johnny Gargano isn’t the biggest fan of Lafayette, Louisiana.

Former NXT Triple Crown Champion Johnny Gargano recently appeared on The Sessions with Renée Paquette. ‘Johnny Wrestling’ called back to his brief call-up to Monday Night RAW in 2019, which he was informed of while enjoying time with his family during his father’s birthday.

“[Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa] were doing the story in NXT and everything was going great and then the next thing I know I’m getting a call saying I’m gonna be on Monday Night RAW and I’m called up to RAW and SmackDown,” Gargano recalled. “It was completely out of left field. We had no idea.  I was literally in Cleveland, Ohio. I was at my dad’s birthday party. I was like, ‘It’s gonna be a great weekend. I get to enjoy myself. I’m not going to wrestle for a little bit. It’s gonna be fantastic,’ and I get a call from Matt Bloom that says, ‘You’re going to be on Monday Night RAW on Monday, you’re officially called up.’ We’re literally in the middle of — I am the North American Champion right now. Tommaso is the NXT Champion. We’re literally building to a match between us at TakeOver in New York. What is happening?”

Gargano then delved into the night of his aforementioned debut, which occurred on a certain Monday evening in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he, alongside fellow NXT stars Tommaso Ciampa, Ricochet, and the former Aleister Black all made their debut on WWE’s red brand.

“Ricochet, Aleister Black, me, and Tommaso are called up randomly in Lafayette, Louisiana…the worst,” remembered Gargano. “If you live in Lafayette, Louisiana, I’m sorry. Bad crowd. Not the best place to debut four NXT people as well. Maybe New York, Chicago, one of those markets where [fans] are kind of smart. But now, I literally had to text Tommaso and say, ‘Hey, can you go to my apartment,’ because I don’t have gear. I’m in Cleveland. Like, I have to fly from Cleveland to Lafayette the next day. I’m like, ‘Can you go to my apartment,’ we had to FaceTime, ‘Go to my apartment get my gear, get a suit for me to wear,’  because I gotta wear dress clothes for this occasion, right? I had to FaceTime with Tommaso and say, ‘Okay, get that suit, get that shirt, get that. He got all that, packed that, brought it to me Lafayette. I think that might have been one of the saddest flights I’ve ever taken.”

While excited to have an opportunity on a bigger stage, Gargano explains how he wish there was more of a direction with his call-up, rather than just seemingly playing it by ear.

“I’m always in the mindset of like, if you want things to succeed, you need to plan you need long-term storytelling, long-term plan,” Gargano explained. “I felt like that’s what we were really doing really well in NXT is we were telling long-term stories that people were invested in and I feel like in wrestling, if you have a plan, most times, it’ll gonna work out. We got there and the whole car ride, me, Aleister, Tommaso, Ricochet, we were like — because we all knew nothing. No one knew anything and we were like, ‘What are we doing on this show? Are we a group? Are we showing up as the new Nexus? What’s happening?’ I had no idea what was going on. Like, what are we doing? Then we get there we find out it’s me and Tommaso vs. The Revival, me and Tommaso are teaming again, in a tag, Aleister and Ricochet are doing singles stuff. We always loved working with The Revival because we had a great run with them on NXT and they’re the best, but we just didn’t know what was happening. So we go through that match. Then on SmackDown, we wrestle Cesaro and Sheamus, and everything’s great. Vince is awesome. I’m in the hallway, just hanging out, Vince has come up with smacking me on the back. ‘Good job, kid. Good job.’ But it’s one of those things where like, I felt like we had unfinished business in NXT. The story we were telling was not done yet, and we needed to kind of end this story the right way. So it ended up working out to where they found out Tommaso’s neck needed surgery.”

According to Gargano, he and Tommaso Ciampa were slated to regularly compete on both RAW and SmackDown, however Ciampa soon-after received the news that he’d be needing neck surgery, which nixed both of the former DIY members plans on the main roster altogether.

“I believe we were at RAW or Smackdown and Tommaso saw the doctor and Tommaso pulled me aside and said, they’re pulling me there,” Gargano recalled. “Maybe I’ll get surgery and then when that happened, I was like, Okay, well, what do we do now? Because I think the ultimate plan was for us to do RAW and SmackDown stuff, but keep doing NXT stuff as well, because Tommaso was NXT Champion, and I was a North American Champion. I just lost it, though. But then Tommaso had to get neck surgery. I remember as soon as I heard that, I texted Shawn Michaels, I texted everyone. I was like, ‘Hey, Tommaso’s out. If there was no plan —’ I think the plan was me and him to be a tag team, the turn to happen, and me and him to feud up there. I’m not really sure, logistically. But, if you don’t have plans right now, just send me back to NXT. So they have somebody that can main event, this TakeOver, everyone agrees, ‘Okay, we’ll send you back. Then we’ll bring you back eventually.’ Then luckily, the USA deal happened and they were like, ‘We need Johnny on USA,’ and then it was just one of those things where it never got talked about again.”

Gargano’s WWE contract expired on December 10 and made his last appearance for the company on the December 7 edition of NXT 2.0 and hasn’t provided any clarity on his in-ring future. However, ‘Johnny Wrestling’ has remained busy outside of the ring as he and partner Candice LeRae welcomed their first child, Quill on February 17.