Johnny Gargano: WWE NXT Takeover New York Drew A 1 Million Dollar Gate

Takeover: New York brought in big money.

Takeover: New York supposedly brought in big money for the NXT brand.

WrestleMania weekend is always a smash hit for the wrestling industry in terms of financial success. During the week of WrestleMania 35, Ring Of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling ran a joint show that saw an attendance number exceeding 16,000 while other independent companies like GCW saw great attendance numbers as well. NXT Takeover: New York was one of the most critically acclaimed events of the weekend, and it turns out that the show brought in big money for the black and yellow brand.

When appearing on a recent episode of The Sessions with Renee Paquette, former NXT Champion Johnny Gargano revealed that the show drew a one million dollar gate.

“We all have friends in AEW. AEW has friends in NXT, right? It wasn’t like the locker rooms were competing with each other. Obviously, if you have shows on at the same time each night, you’re gonna be competing against each other, that’s just how it works. It’s so wild to think back and during that time period, and like the numbers that — both shows were doing really good numbers in their spots. NXT, at one point, was almost doing a million. That’s the thing, like, some people kinda are rewriting history and saying NXT never did well. But at some point in some shows, NXT was close to a million, but there were some competing, there was some like, ‘We got to do this because they’re doing that,’ but I don’t know if anything was ever like, booked purposely. I’m sure some cards were booked on purpose at certain times because other things were happening that was unbeknownst to all of us.

There wasn’t anything competing going on between locker rooms or anything like that. It’s weird to me now to see people looking back at the Golden Age of NXT with anything other than fond memories, because for all of us, we wish we would have appreciated it more. Because there was a time period when NXT was selling out 15,000 seat arenas TakeOver in New York, Me and Adam Cole, our Two out of Three Falls Match did a million-dollar gate. we drew a million dollars. People are like, ‘NXT never made money,’ NXT made a lot of money. I promise. I’ve seen the numbers. We drew over a million dollars. I promise you. There was never any like, ‘We need to do this for that.’ But I guess I just wish we would have appreciated the moments we had more. It’s one of those things where you never know you’re in the good times while you’re in them.”

Gargano left WWE/NXT in December 2021 after his contract expired with the company. Fightful Select exclusively reported details about Gargano’s contract back in September 2021.

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