Ring of Honor star PJ Black, formerly known in WWE as Justin Gabriel, joined VOC Nation’s In the Room broadcast to talk about his decision to sign with ROH, being there for the genesis of NXT, and his relationship with the McMahon family.  Here are some highlights:

On the ROH roster being part of his reason for signing:  “We’ve got some really big names, that was one of the deciding factors for me.  I looked at the roster and I looked at everyone they signed and I was like, ‘this is where I want to be.’  I want to have great matches with all of these fellas.”

On the options he had to go elsewhere:  “I had 2 really good offers.  The one was (a) really really good (offer) and something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while; but at the end of the day, I think I made my first pros and cons list and ROH was the easy pick for me.”

On his current health condition:  “Physically I’m better than ever…it took over 2 years to get my heath back…I feel good, I have 10lbs more muscle than I used to have, and somehow I’m still light on my feet.”

On being underrated as a performer:  “I only noticed that (I was underrated toward the end of my WWE days…Obviously I can do everything in the ring, but a lot of people (didn’t) know how good my character work was and the promos and stuff like that.  That was never one of my stronger points, but when I was injured I had to focus on (mic work and character development) for a while and it’s one of my strong points now.”

On his relationship with WWE:  “Right before I signed with ROH a year ago…I walked in (to the Staples Center at Survivor Series in LA) and I ran into Hunter and Vince and I actually talked with them for a little while.  There were some talks of me coming back but obviously the ROH thing came along and I took that.  Hunter is an awesome dude and Vince is a crazy genius too.  Me and Hunter had some misunderstandings in the past, but I mean that’s just business.  I feel like you bump heads with your friends and your family all the time so that’s just normal.  It’s not that I had like full time heat or anything.”

On being part of the beginning of NXT, and whether more could have been done with the Nexus angle:  “Maybe we could have pushed a little bit harder for things that we wanted to get done and wanted to happen; at the time we were still walking a little bit on eggshells and not really sure what we could get away with.  Toward the end, we were pretty sure that we could get stuff done…It made it a little bit easier that a big group of us went up (to the main roster at the same time); it does feel good to be part of that history.”

On politics at ROH vs WWE:  “If you want to get something done there are so many hoops that you have to jump through in a big company like WWE.  They have all the agents and the writers and then it has to get cleared by Vince, so it takes a while…with ROH there is only 1 or 2 people and I can speak directly to them.  All of my ideas are always appreciated and at least looked at.  It’s a much easier process (than it is in WWE).”

On why he chose ROH over other offers:  “Creative freedom was very high on my list.  I have all these ideas for this new character that I’m going to do.  In the middle of the year you’re going to see a completely different (character), and I’ve been working on that for a while.  (ROH) likes the idea; it’s a little bit over the top, but they’re going to let me run with it and see what happens.  That’s big…I’m not saying that in WWE you don’t get that, but a lot of times (ideas) will just get squashed.”

On changing with the times:  “For me personally, I like to change and do different things and do new things because wrestling evolves all the time.  Look at wrestling 10 years ago and 10 years before that. Can you imagine 10 years from now what it’s going to be?  I’m talking about everything…style of wrestling, the way of storytelling, the characters, the moves…it keeps evolving so I feel as a performer I have to keep evolving.