El Phantasmo Learned His Grandfather Died During NJPW G1 Climax Tournament

The NJPW G1 Climax tournament is underway and El Phantasmo learned tragic news while taking part in it. In an interview with NJPW World following his match with Great-O-Khan (via Fightful), Phantasmo revealed that he found out his grandfather died while he is in Japan.

He said: “You may think you know how hard the G1 Climax really is on you. You can look up and down the blocks, and everybody’s got some sort of injury. My [trapezius muscle] is fucked. People’s necks are fucked, their legs, their knees, and that’s fine. That’s what we expect. What you guys don’t realize is how hard emotionally it can be when you’re all by yourself, when you have no friends, and you get a call from your dad, who says ‘your Papa has passed away’ an hour before you gotta go out there and wrestle Okada in the main event. You try and block those emotions and go to your job and then you finish, the adrenaline wears off, and you go back to your little, tiny, dinky-ass Japanese hotel, and then you realize it’s too late to call your grandma, whose husband of 70 years just died, whose daughter died over a year ago, and you’ve got to stay up all night by yourself unable to tell them how much you love them. Then in the morning, you call Grandma and talk about how Papa is gone, and that’s okay. Then you have to lie to her, and you have to tell her that you’re doing good. You can’t say that you’ve lost three matches. You have zero points at the bottom of the blocks. You’re going to tell her that you’re winning and you’re fighting for Papa.

You go to the gym by yourself, you listen to music, and you come here and pretend like everything’s okay, but it’s not. That’s what this job is. I was here all pandemic when my aunt died. I’m here when my Papa dies, and I don’t know how much the people know, but when you guys chat my name, that’s the only love I get around here these days, and it means so much to me. You guys don’t know. Just those three little letters keeps me going. I told myself I wouldn’t be sad. My papa was 91 years old. He was supposed to die a month ago. That’s why I was at the hospital. I couldn’t do Wrestling Revolver [because] he was supposed to die, but he kept fighting. Not one week, not two weeks, not three weeks. He fought four weeks past the time that he was supposed to pass away, and that’s fighting spirit. That’s the fighting spirit that I need. That’s the fighting spirit that I need to have to win matches, to win the G1 Climax, to tell my grandma that I’m okay.”