Leon Slater: I Wouldn’t Be TNA World Champion Right Now If It Wasn’t For My Time In WWE NXT

Leon Slater speaks about how influential is run in WWE NXT has been for his career, noting he wouldn’t be TNA World Champion without it.

Slater is the current TNA World Champion, capturing the title at TNA Bound For Glory. It has been a decent amount of time since Slater was making his appearances in WWE NXT last year and the beginning of this year, but for Slater, he credits it with being a formative moment in his career.

While speaking to The Extreme Channel in a new interview, Leon Slater spoke about his time working in WWE NXT, noting that he wouldn’t be TNA World Champion without his run in WWE NXT.

“I built my way up, and I built my way up to the point within TNA that WWE reached out to us. Obviously, everybody, if they could, would reach out to WWE and be like, ‘oh, like, I’ll show up this Tuesday,’ this and that. But unfortunately, that’s not how it works. They reach out to you, and, you know, I feel like for- again, for someone that doesn’t work there and that hasn’t ever signed a deal there, I feel like my run there was… as if I’d been working there for two or three years. You know what I mean? I think the difference between me and a couple other people is that I used my opportunity there. I gained the platform, the exposure, countless lessons learned, and I’ve run them back to TNA. I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t be TNA world champion right now if it wasn’t for my time in NXT and those couple of times on the main roster as well, because like I said, those lessons have been invaluable. So to anyone that thinks TNA is just the stepping stone, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think it is a true partnership where people from our side, from the TNA side, get to go over there and learn a complete style, and the same thing with the people from NXT that have come over to TNA in the past. They get to work with people like Nic Nemeth, like Matt and Jeff Hardy, like a Frankie Kazarian. You know, these guys that have been in the game 20, 25, 30, 35 years. You know what I mean? Which is, again, absolutely invaluable experience for wrestlers of any caliber. You know what I mean? So I think the partnership is a perfect word to describe what we’ve got going on with WWE right now, for sure.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Leon recalled finding out he would be wrestling on John Cena’s retirement show. You can read more about that here.

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