NXT Tag Team Champions Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa recently spoke with ESPN.com about their careers and more. Here are the highlights.
On winning NXT Tag Team Titles:
“It just doesn’t seem real yet,” Gargano said. “I don’t think we live in the moment like some people do. [But I think] we’re going to look back at how we got here and our story and everything that went into it, and we’re going to think it’s pretty cool.”
“I think [becoming] tag team champions, it gives you kind of a moment to hit the reset button and kind of look back at the year and appreciate it,” Ciampa said.
On NXT:
“I think it’s something that we both wanted,” Gargano said. “You talk to any wrestler, and they want to be in this spot. NXT is the hottest thing going right now.”
“When we started with NXT, there were no issues as far as taking independent bookings,” Ciampa said. “Then we could kind of sense it was getting to that point, and then once we got confirmation [of going full-time in the WWE] but the news wasn’t made public, I think [for] both of us, that was the hardest part. It was four or five weeks of us knowing this is probably our last time in this town for this federation, for this group, but the fans didn’t know. A lot of times our opponents didn’t know. The promoters didn’t know. That was a tough four-to-six-week stretch, but once the announcement was made, it was just … fun. I enjoyed those last eight to 12 independent bookings, just took them and appreciated them for what they were.”
