For me, my number one guy would be Tanahashi from New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Like, watching him, like, this guy is a bonafide rockstar over in Japan. He can't even walk down the street without getting stopped, the way that he carries himself.
I would love, love, love, love a one-on-one match with Tanahashi, and I've never had one before. He's my all-time favorite New Japan guy. I think the guy's a rockstar. He's so cool, just in the ring and in person.
The ROH guys looking at the New Japan guys coming over, we're just psyched. We think, "oh great this is just going to make our show even better." The respect level with New Japan and ROH is at an all-time high. And anytime we get a company like New Japan Pro Wrestling on a ROH show, it just benefits our show. It has everybody all jacked up, ready to do the best we can like we always do.
Once I start to do a film, it has inferences. If a guy walks down a street and kicks a dog, you're saying something about that guy. A guy walks down the street and somebody's about to be run over and he shoves him out of his way and gets hit by the car himself, you're saying that guy's a hero. You can't avoid making certain statements.
I trained at All Pro Wrestling in the U.S. Later, I signed up with the New Japan Pro Wrestling. Then WWE noticed me.
For a long time, almost 14 years, I wrestled in Japan, so I didn't think I would leave New Japan Pro Wrestling, but I started changing my mind. I wanted to see the other world. I wanted to change something. I wanted to be bigger.
You should hear the guy who dubs me in Japan. I like him the most. He has a high squeaky voice.
I know him as Terry. Hulk Hogan has probably done more for wrestling than anybody has. He got Hollywood involved in wrestling. Hogan was a big guy, but that big ol' guy could move, and he knew how to get those people going. He had it all. He got pro wrestling to a whole new level.
I like all kinds of wrestling, I like pro wrestling, so if there's a guy I've been feuding with for over a year, and damn it, the only thing left to do is beat the crap out of each other in a steel cage, then it's time to do it.
I'm going to show you how we do it in New Japan Pro Wrestling. That's what you get whenever I wrestle, whoever's in the ring with me.
As a kid, I was scared of losing my mind. In Terrell, Texas, where I grew up, there was a guy that would walk down the street talking to himself. And I used to watch him and feel uneasy. And there was a sanitarium where people would say, 'That's where all the crazy people go.' It really sort of frightened me.
A long time ago, I took a walk down a street in Harlem in New York City. I came upon a man who asked me for a dollar. He had asked a few other people before me, but they only passed him by without glancing his way. I stopped and handed the man some money. As I began to turn away, he reached out and shook my hand. He looked me in the eyes and said, "I will bless you." Now, I'm not saying that was God Himself. But how do we know that it wasn't someone working for him, walking around in disguise, just to see what we would do?
Hopefully, when people watch 'Lucha Underground' and WWE, Ring of Honor, New Japan, AAA, and any other promotion out there, they fall in love with pro wrestling. Pro wrestling, as it affects pop culture, is bigger than any one promotion.
I pivoted from a pro-Trump guy to more of a journalistic guy, and I'm going to keep making that pivot. So whenever people think of me as, like, a pro-Trump guy, I don't want people to think of me as a pro-Trump guy anymore.
When I was a young guy, when I first started with G.E., Jack Welch sent us all to Japan because in those days Japan was gonna crush us. And we learned a lot about Japan when we were there. But over the subsequent 30 years, the Japanese companies all fell behind. And the reason why they fell behind is because they didn't globalize.
Here's the thing: Tanahashi has this idea that wrestling has to be a certain way. There are borders that you shouldn't cross. Wrestling should be wrestling; there's a 'classic' way. But the thing is, when I watch a Tanahashi match, I feel nothing.
What that’s allowed me to do is have a vantage point about my own life that's accessible to people still. I could see a guy walking down the street and be like, Even though I'm famous, I got more in common with this guy than, like, Brad Pitt.