NXT North American Champion Roderick Strong recently spoke to Corey Graves on After The Bell about feeling like he wanted a break from Ring Of Honor, and how the call from WWE had come at the perfect time. Strong says he talked to ROH in 2016 about changing things up due to feeling a little overexposed after such a long tenure.
“I was actually talking to my weight lifting coach at the time, coach Wess, and this was in 2016, I had spoken with Ring Of Honor and I had told them that I wanted to just go international,” Strong said, “I didn’t want to be with the company anymore for a little bit. I had been there almost 13 years. And I just needed a break, you know? Too much of something is just—overexposed with the company, they didn’t really know what to necessarily do with me, blah blah blah.”
Strong says it got to a point where he felt he was OK with never getting to WWE because he’d still prove how good he was all over the world, but then the call came at the right moment.
“And legit when I left the gym that day, I got a call. I was like, ‘What the…,’ I was like, freaking – this is unbelievable. But it was necessary for me to have all that time. Because I was, like you said, wrestling just becomes such a focus. I didn’t really focus on becoming the person I wanted to be outside of the ring. And then, the more time I put into that, just the better my life got. The better I got at this job,” Strong said, “I eventually ended up meeting my wife, and I was the type of person that I wanted to be when I met her. That was my goal. Because I didn’t want to be in a situation when I wasn’t prepared to handle a relationship. You know, they take effort and I wasn’t willing to give any of my time to anybody really.
“The timing couldn’t have been better. It was just really really wild that, after all of that happened, and then I signed and soon after I signed,” Strong said, “we found out she was pregnant, and just everything kind of just fell into place. Especially coming to NXT and having the opportunity to be home the last two and a half years as my son has been on this planet. It’s been the most amazing time of my life.
Strong will defend the NXT North American Championship on today’s episode of NXT.
