CLEVELAND — Over his 15 years in professional wrestling, Johnny Gargano has headlined shows around the world, but as the biggest match of his career approached, he returned to his Cleveland roots in order to find balance and perspective.
And one of the stops Gargano made to find that balance was FirstEnergy Stadium, Home of the Cleveland Browns, where he ran sprints in the stands and on the track surrounding the field as well as pondered the moment while sitting in Section 508 alone in an arena that holds more than 64,000 people on game days.
Gargano’s journey to Cleveland was documented in a video posted to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.’s YouTube page.
“This past year, I focused on hatred, revenge,” Gargano said while chronicling his rivalry with former tag-team partner Tommaso Ciampa. “I wanted to come home and I wanted to surround myself by things I love, and I’m going to carry all of this with me in New York. Everything I need is right here to become the next NXT Champion.”
During the video, Gargano visited his father’s catering business and spoke with his parents, both of whom will be at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn tonight to watch him ply his trade against Adam Cole in a two-out-of-three falls match at NXT TakeOver: New York.
“When it came time to go to college, I told him I’d send him to college, and he said to me, ‘No, I’m going to be a wrestler,’” recalled his father, Frank Gargano. “That was it, so that’s what he did. He’s actually living his dream.”
Adrianne Klasinski, Gargano’s mother, added, “I saw it in him that he was just going to be something big one day. Be it wrestling or whatever it was, he was going to be special.”
NXT was created to be a developmental territory for WWE’s weekly brands, “Monday Night Raw” and “Smackdown Live,” but something special happened for the superstars as they made their ways to the main rosters.
Through hard-hitting competition and passionate performances from Gargano and others, the superstars made NXT its own sensation by consistently putting on memorable shows across the country, and internationally, so much so that there is now an NXT UK brand that is producing weekly programs and TakeOver specials.
“I think NXT is kind of like the Cleveland, Ohio of professional wrestling,” Gargano told WKYC.com ahead of the NXT: Cleveland show last month. “We’re that underdog whose hungry, who’s always out to prove people wrong, and that’s kind of what our locker room represents.”
On a visit to his old gym, Absolute Intense Wrestling School in Cleveland, Gargano promised the current crop of sports entertainment hopefuls that he would be seeing them again soon, but the next time, it will be accompanied by some hardware.
“What I’m about to experience at Barclays Center is 15 years of work, 15 years of travelling up and down the roads, but I promise you, I promise you, the journey is worth it,” Gargano said.
“I’m excited to share this with you guys, and I can’t wait until after TakeOver: New York, when I’m going to come back in this building, I’m going to share an NXT Championship with you guys. I’m going to bring that title back home to Cleveland. I’m going to bring it back to you guys.”
