Hirooki Goto On Getting Into Wrestling Through Fire Pro Video Game, When he First Found NJPW

Hirooki Goto spoke with NJPW for a new interview discussing his origins in wrestling and more. Highlights are below:

On when he first found NJPW: “It would have been first or second year at junior high, I watched World Pro-Wrestling on TV…Late at night at the weekend. I’d tape it and watch it Monday morning before school.”

On watching other promotions at the time: “Back then there wasn’t just All and New Japan, but I’d watch Michinoku Pro and a bunch of other promotions. The first stuff I watched was joshi wrestling, JWP. Actually, the first thing that got me into wrestling was videogames. It was all thanks to ‘Fire Pro’…I had a few friends who got introduced to wrestling by videogames.”

On what match from that era stands out: “For me it’s got to be January 4 1994. (Hiroshi) Hase and (Keiji) Muto vs the Steiner Brothers. Man, that Steiner Screwdriver was something else…I loved [Vader’s] match with Antonio Inoki in ’96, and Muto vs (Nobuhiko) Takada when NJPW took on UWFi. There was a prime time special on TV for that event, and being able to watch pro-wrestling in prime-time was really special for me.”

On “playing at wrestling” at school: “We took it seriously, too! We’d get crash mats from the gym and put them on the ground for our ring. When we started messing around, it was with martial arts holds and stuff, things you didn’t really need the mats for, but it escalated pretty quick. We did some dumb, dangerous stuff (laughs).”