During a recent interview on After the Bell with Corey Graves, Dolph Ziggler discussed how his NXT title reign came to be and working with Bron Breakker.

On his NXT title win: 

“Everyone’s asked me like, ‘Hey, how do you feel about this, are you surprised?’ Surprised? I came here to scout talent and then two weeks later I’m the frickin’ NXT Champion. That wasn’t in the cards, that wasn’t even a thought process. It’s hard to say because I’m constantly working, I’m never out sick, but I felt stale. Roode and I are really good at what we do and it didn’t seem like we were doing anything that important right now. It’s what have you done for me lately and at the moment we’re not crushing it, didn’t seem like we were going to have a match on WrestleMania unless we make something happen. We saw an opening and said, ‘Hey, let’s try this out, let’s go see NXT,’ because half the time anybody that shows up from NXT their first match is with me anyway. Now I’m going to cut out the middle man, go down to NXT and start wrestling them there. I really came to scout talent, see if a few people had some up-and-coming things that I could possibly work with down the line, and got thrown right into the mix. It’s crazy, it’s so funny. If you’re surprised that I’m NXT Champion, I’m blown away. I did not plan on this.”

 “I’m very happy to be in this moment with [Bron] Breakker who’s got 20 matches under his belt. He’s got this insane speed and power that, I’ve been speared by Goldberg and I’m like ‘pfft, this guy, are you kidding me?’ This kid hits harder and I’m not even making that up. That spear put me down and I was happy to be able to kick out and keep moving but holy crap, he’s got that in their prime linebacker closing speed for everything, not just the spear. And when he figures out how to hone that in a year or two or three, he’s going to be someone who’s kind of unstoppable.”