Kevin Knight Recalls ‘Strange’ Time Working For NJPW During Pandemic Lockdown

Kevin Knight was part of the NJPW roster during the COVID lockdown era, and he recently reflected on the strangeness of the period and more. Knight, who is now with AEW, spoke with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview and weighed in on wrestling for NJPW without fans and more. You can see highlights below:

On being part of NJPW Strong during the pandemic lockdown era: “It was definitely a strange way because I had no idea how I was being perceived outside of that recording studio. There was no fans to hear or like respond to anything that I was doing. Online, you can only take things online with a grain of salt. So you never really know who’s watching because people that’s watching may not have social media, may not speak about wrestling online at all. So you never really know how that’s being perceived.

“So I think my whole first year in New Japan was in front of nobody. We didn’t get an audience until, maybe, I was there for a year and a half at an LA show and that’s when I first finally got to be a young lion in front of people. So not only was I learning a new style, I was in a whole new company and just seeing how it was different from the indies to New Japan was such a shocking eye opener a year into already being there. So it was like, ‘Okay, wow, the people actually do like me.’ We don’t know that unless we get a live response. I only did six months on the indies beforehand, so I was still extremely new. So getting those reps under my belt really, really helped me as a performer.”

On not being able to travel to Japan at the time: “Man, look at all the guys in the dojo at that time. We’re all biding our time. Like you said, we came in at a unique time where we couldn’t really go to Japan for those two, three years. So felt like we were just wasting away. Just whenever we do get that chance, you know we’re going to go crazy. I feel like everybody you see coming from that class in that time is really exploding and doing their thing because we got time to make up for it. We got to make up for lost time.”