Roderick Strong: I Needed All The Time Outside Of WWE

WWE has changed it’s hiring structure in recent years. It was once very rare that an independent talent would be signed to WWE. Nowadays, many WWE and NXT Superstars have deep independent wrestling roots, with many not even changing their names.

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One such star is NXT North American Champion Roderick Strong, who spoke to Corey Graves on the After The Bell about almost giving up hope on getting to WWE, but then he finally got the call.

“You know, I’d finally come to terms with the fact that if I never go there I’ll be okay. but I’m going to continue to prove all over the world that I’m as good as I feel I am and legit,” he began. “When I left the gym that day I got a call. I was like, What the… Like, I was like “freak” I was like This is unbelievable. But you know it was necessary for me to have all that time [outside of WWE,] because I was, you know, like you said, wrestling just become such a focus. I didn’t really focus on becoming like the person I wanted to be outside of the ring. And then the more time I put into that just the better my life got.”

Roddy will defend the NXT North American Title on the Christmas Day episode of NXT next week.