Fatherhood Transformed My Wrestling Perspective

In a recent interview with The Wrestling Classic, former WWE Tag Team Champion, Johnny Gargano revealed how fatherhood has revolutionized his outlook as a professional wrestler. Gargano’s wife fellow WWE star Candice LeRae – gave birth to their son Quill in 2022.

Since then, he has changed the way he perceives his wrestling job. Gargano is well-known for being his biggest critic and has often been very honest about the difficulties of self-doubt and dissatisfaction with his shows. Yet Quill’s arrival brought another perspective.

Fatherhood Focus Shift

Johnny Gargano divulged that “I think I’ve been very open in my interviews about how I hate my own matches, I hate my own stuff, I don’t like any of my stuff”. His expression continued: “So if something really irks me after like a ‘SmackDown’ or something, I should have done this, I should have done that”.

But every Saturday morning it gets switched off because when you get home you become a dad you want to be there for him and so it is easy to turn that off on Saturday morning when I get home and I have to be a dad. Then he sees me and he’s like ‘what happened on Smackdown last night?’ He doesn’t know what happened on Friday night, ‘SmackDown’; he just wants to play with Dad”.

This move towards this new role as fatherhood offers Gargano an escape from the pressure of wrestling. Instead of focusing on the bad side now let us imagine how good it is for him to spend time with his son who doesn’t know anything about his wrestling stardom in WWE.

As such a fatherly role can allow him more time for both joys and responsibilities in life beyond fighting career. Furthermore, Gargano also stated that having Quill around had been great since it allowed him to relax without thinking about wrestling in his mind and to become a proper father.

This shift of focus has renewed his sense of purpose as he seeks to be the best father that he can be, in and out of the ring. The above…