Johnny Gargano joined the WWE in 2015 until his release in 2021. He left the company in December to be with his then-pregnant wife Candice LeRae who gave birth to baby Quil in February 2022.
As Gargano left NXT just before its reboot as NXT 2.0, fans have speculated that Gargano left the company because NXT went through a change that hasn’t been welcomed warmly.
To make things clear, Gargano talked about the reason he left WWE while guesting on Renee Paquette’s podcast The Sessions. Gargano said that his departure had nothing to do with 2.0, and he left because he felt his character started getting stale.
“I kind of made my mind up a year in advance that this was going to be my last,” Johnny Gargano told Renee Paquette (via WrestlingInc). “Like people said ‘Johnny left because NXT changed,’ no, I kind of had it in my mind. I wasn’t leaving to go to any particular place, I kind of just felt like I needed to go because if you watch a TV show or anything in general and you see the same character, obviously I changed character, but if you see the same person on TV for 5 years, 6 years, it gets stale.”
“I believe that being off TV and being away makes people miss you and I think people have to have a chance to miss you and if they don’t, they don’t really care in general.”
Since Gargano left, he hasn’t appeared anywhere. Recently, he announced that he will make his first public appearance outside of WWE at the annual WrestleCon convention during WrestleMania 38 weekend in Dallas, Texas.
Johnny Gargano teamed up with Tommaso Ciampa to form the tag team DIY in NXT. They won the NXT Tag Team Championships once in their stint. They both also feuded with each other, with the storyline earning a lot of praise from both fans and critics alike. Gargano also won the NXT Championship and the NXT North American Championship a record three times, making him the first-ever NXT Triple Crown winner. The only other person to accomplish this feat is Adam Cole, who is also not with the WWE anymore.
