Daniel Garcia made an appearance on Talk Is Jericho to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, Garcia reflected on some of the matches he worked in WWE. He worked Drew Gulak in 2018 on 205 Live in his first match while his most recent WWE bout came in 2021 when he lost to Tyler Rust in 2021. He was never signed by WWE.
“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.”
“I was like, Okay, if he wants to play that, I’ll play it back to him. At the time, I had an interest from Ring of Honor and I knew AEW wanted to bring me back in for extra work. But I was like, I’m gonna make this seem bigger than it actually is. So I said to him, ‘With that being said, I’ll talk to you very soon.’ I think he got kind of hot at me for that. I think it shook him up a little bit. They emailed me a couple weeks later, kind of saying like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna stay in contact, blah, blah, blah’, and then that kind of made me mad. Then I went on a crazy Indie run and then I signed with AEW.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription