Baron Corbin speaks his mind about independent wrestlers and says WWE is for “elite level athletes”

During an appearance on WWE’s The Bump, Baron Corbin gave his thoughts on independent wrestlers…

“[Johnny Gargano has] done some great things for somebody that nobody expected anything from. A lot of these guys, it’s a bragging right. Ten years, I’ve been wrestling for 15 years. Why is that a bragging right? I made a phone call, and the WWE brought me in for a tryout and signed me within the week. That’s how it works. I don’t need to go work for a hot dog and popcorn in your local gymnasium. That’s not what I do. It’s not a bragging right for me to go, ‘Ah, I drove around in my buddy’s Honda Civic for six hours to go to this show and then drive 12 hours to this show and the car broke down and we ran out of gas, and we didn’t money to eat. That’s not something you brag about.”

“These guys come in and that’s part of their story. They’re giving hope to hope to people who sit in the audience and go, ‘Ah, I wanna be Johnny Gargano.’ How many little kids see that? Because they have no hope, they have no goals, they have no dreams, and they wanna see a guy like that and they go, ‘Oh, man, if this little guy or Kevin Owens, this guy, I relate to him. We’re similar, we do the same things, we like the same things. I can become a WWE Superstar.’ No, you can’t. Look, this job is not for everybody. My mailman is a nice guy. This job is not for him. This is for elite level athletes, world renowned competitors, and guys when you walk into a room, they look at somebody like me and they go, ‘That guy is somebody.’ If they’ve never watched WWE before, they go, man, look at that watch, look at the diamonds that he’s wearing, look at that suit. That guy is somebody important, whether they’ve seen me or not. You walk into a room with Johnny, with Kevin, with AJ Styles, and you’re just like, oh man, there’s some people in the room hanging out. I saw 500 guys like that at the mall today. There’s a difference.” (quotes courtesy of Colin Tessier)