It was August of 2021 when Vince McMahon entered the WWE NXT world and made dramatic changes to the brand. The color scheme was changed, the characters were overhauled, and the vision for the brand was completely switched.
This hurt many of the existing superstars in the brand, and KUSHIDA is one of the first that comes to mind. He left WWE in April of 2022 after his contract expired and returned to NJPW where he vowed to spend the rest of his career. He recently did an interview with NJPW in which he talked about his WWE run. Although, KUSHIDA does not typically like to talk about his time with WWE, he made an exception here as he thought it was important to share his story.
Speaking about the NXT changes, KUSHIDA said “Well, to set the scene a bit, the turnover in WWE is really relentless. In August of 2021, there was a really sudden change in thinking there. Essentially they wanted to train young wrestlers under 30 that didn’t have pro-wrestling experience and had come from other athletic backgrounds. When it comes to me, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that it left me redundant, effectively. You have to remember I was 36 when I got an offer from WWE. It still really seems kinda hard to believe that Triple H would reach out with an offer.”
KUSHIDA also said that when he was with WWE, he was extremely interested in moving his residence from Orlando to Los Angeles but was denied numerous times. He said “I had wanted to move from Orlando to LA, but the company wouldn’t let me; that hurt my motivation a little. I think there’s a little bit of magic around LA that made it somewhere I always wanted to live. Florida and LA are six hours apart, but from LA you can fly direct to Japan. From Florida, you have to make connections, and that’s pretty tough for me.”
Speaking about himself and his wrestling character, KUSHIDA said, “HHH and Shawn Michaels would always say this when I was in WWE, ‘make it organic’. Me coming back to an NJPW ring having died my hair blonde and with new gear, entering the G1 and then challenging a heavyweight champion. That might be the organic path for a wrestler that came through the Dojo system. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t be the organic path for KUSHIDA. In the end, KUSHIDA is KUSHIDA. It’s me, it’s organic. My whole life story is me being a short, small guy who took himself to Mexico and got on this road of being a professional wrestler. I didn’t come through the NJPW system, and I have pride in that too.”
You can read the entire interview here. There is a part two of the interview set to be released in the near future.
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