Johnny Gargano Reflects On Being A Father Figure To Austin Theory, Seeing Him Work With Vince McMahon

Johnny Gargano is a proud papa.

In an interview with Connor Casey of ComicBook, Johnny Gargano reflected on being a mentor of sorts to Austin Theory, who now seems to be getting some advice from Vince McMahon on RAW. Gargano spent time with Theory in The Way in NXT, and he said that he always wanted to help Theory and Indi Hartwell get to the next level, and it’s really cool to see his friend get this opportunity.

“It feels like Austin just kind of went from me being his father figure to Vince McMahon now being his father figure. But yeah, it’s wild, man. I’m so happy for him because he does work really, really hard. And Austin and Indi (Hartwell) both, it was always my mission this past year to put them in a position to where they could be Superstars. And they’re so young and they’re so talented, the both of them, and I feel like WWE has such a gold mine in Austin and Indi that I hope they take advantage of it because I feel like they can make that company a lot of money for many, many years. But yeah, it’s so cool to see. I left a comment on one of his Instagram posts and told him to go become WWE Champion because he’s got all the tools to do it. So it’s just very cool to see him get that opportunity.”

Gargano also spoke about seeing the new direction of NXT 2.0, which started to change while he was still signed with WWE. The brand is drastically different than the one he was initially part of, but you can still see the current talent that is still passionate and taking advantage of the situation they’re in.

“It’s just one of those things where I don’t think there was any moment in particular that was like, ‘Oh wow, things are way different now.’ We knew that a rebrand was coming, but like anything in wrestling, things change all the time. Things constantly evolve. We just talked about earlier in this interview, how if you do something for so a certain way, things get boring and you kind of need to refreshen things sometimes. I think honestly, it definitely needed a little bit of a kick. I feel like they’re incredibly happy with how things are going and you have to be happy with how some of those guys have already developed on, in front of your very own eyes. Like I mentioned Bron Breakker for instance. Bron Breakker’s a guy that I think I mention all the time, you can pay people to learn how to wrestle, right?

“You can pay people to do this, but you can’t pay someone to genuinely love it or you can’t pay people to want to be better at it. There’s one thing to say, “Okay, teach me how to do a wrist lock” and you’re going to pay me to do that. And I’m going to learn the wrist lock and that’s all I’m going to do. It’s another thing to genuinely want to be better. And when you find someone who has both those qualities where they want to be better and they are getting better, that’s a diamond. I feel like Bron Breakker is a diamond. There’s so many people I can name that I feel like are really taking advantage of the opportunities they’re given right now but Bron is definitely one of them that I believe in.”

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