Over the past year, one man has continued to find himself in big matches in AEW – and that’s Daniel Garcia. The 23 year old has been in main events against the likes of Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston, and recently was involved in the insane classic of Anarchy In The Arena. He’s even the current protege of Chris Jericho, which is a career highlight in itself. However, he was almost signed to WWE back in 2021.
Daniel Garcia Was Close To Being Signed By WWE
On this week’s episode “Talk Is Jericho,” Daniel Garcia discussed his WWE tryout while speaking with his current mentor. Garcia would say the following about his path through WWE and to AEW.
““I did actually work for WWE. I wrestled Drew Gulak on 205 Live in like a 15 second match. He beat me up pretty bad. It was pretty nasty, pretty ruthless. Then I had a WWE tryout in January of last year, so 2021, and I had a match on NXT right after the tryout. I did one loop of Dark in September of 2020, and then I had my tryout in January of 2021.
I thought I did really well. They asked me to stay another extra day to have a squash match on NXT against Tyler Rust. The match went really well. I remember I went through the back and Shawn Michaels loved it, Road Dog loved it, and A-Train loved it. Triple H shook my hand and said ‘Welcome to the team.’
I think he thought I was signed, but I wasn’t at the time. In my mind, I’m like, ‘I guess I’m going to NXT.’ I talked to Canyon Ceman right before I left. He said, ‘Hey, let me know if any other place has interest because we’ll sign you sooner.’ In my mind. I’m like, that’s disrespectful to me. If you want to sign me, just sign me.”
By October of 2021, he’d be signed by AEW. Do you think Garcia would have lasted in WWE? Let us know what you think in the comment section down below.
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