Manabu Nakanishi Discusses His Upcoming Retirement, How He Wanted to End His Career, Overcoming Injures to Wrestle Again

– NJPW1972.com recently interviewed former IWGP Heavyweight champion Manabu Nakanishi ahead of his scheduled retirement. Nakanishi will be retiring on February 22 at an upcoming event at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan. Below are some highlights.

Manabu Nakanishi on retirement: “Well, like I said at the time, I haven’t been able to perform how I’d like, and I think it’s time to draw a line in the sand. I still can’t say as I’ve decided what to do after, but once the idea came to me, I figured that’s what I should do right away. End of the day, I think it’s the coolest way to go out for a pro-wrestler, swinging ’til the end.”

Nakanishi on Jushin Liger’s retirement not having an impact on his decision: “Nah, talking about Liger will just make me jealous! It’s a different situation, what with my injuries and such.”

Nakanishi on his injury that put him out for over a year: “They carried me out in an ambulance, and I was laid up in a hospital bed for just a little while before I started saying ‘I’ve got a match coming up soon’. The doctors were all ‘You might never walk again! Maybe face reality a little here!’ For me, it wasn’t so much ignoring reality as trying to stay positive. Like ‘this sucks, but it’ll get better’. I don’t even know where that positivity came from!”

Nakanishi on what gave him the strength to get back to the ring: “Well, I got a lot of good advice from a lot of people who came all the way out to my hospital in the sticks. I was really grateful for that. That’s what got me from maybe never living a normal life to making a recovery. Just being able to move around, the doctors were telling me I did good, but I was telling them ‘no, I want to make it back to the ring’. They looked at me as if I had three heads!”