YOH Says He Nearly Cried After Best Of The Super Juniors Match With Will Ospreay, Talks Liger and Hayabusa’s Influence on Him

NJPW’s YOH spoke with the company’s official site for a new interview discussing his Best of the Super Juniors 2019 appearance, his influences and more. You can check out highlights below:

YOH on Jushin Liger’s influence on him: “Absolutely. He was there at just the right time for me to be obsessed… Just the visual impact of a character like that is massive, and then when he took the top half of the suit off to wrestle heavyweights, you saw how jacked he was as well.”

On being a fan of Hayabusa: “I get in the ring Hayabusa style as well. That match with Liger was his first match back from excursion in Japan and really put him on the map; just having Liger as his opponent gave that match impact. When I was a fan, the only merch I’d get from the junior heavyweights would be Liger’s. He just symbolised the entire division.”

YOH on rumors that he would become a a second generation Liger: “Well, he talked to me about it. Then, in 2016, I was having a conversation with a certain wrestler that was there. I said to him ‘I’d like to wrestle under a mask. A ways back, Liger said…’, only for this other wrestler to reply ‘I had the exact same conversation with him!’ (laughs) I figure that he said it to everyone, it was a little rib of his (laughs). But in all seriousness, there’s no following up. There’s no way you could have a second Liger. That name holds so much weight it would be an anchor on you.”

On Will Ospreay and Shingo Takagi’s Best of the Super Juniors match: “For them to meet in the final last year and tear the house down like they did… Obviously as a rival wrestler, that’s tough to see happen, but you can’t be anything other than amazed by that matchup … It was honestly amazing. I was watching the whole thing thinking ‘man, I want to have a match like that.'”

On his own match with Ospreay in the tournament: ” When I wrestled Ospreay in Yamagata in that tournament, it was emotional in a way. The last part of that match I suddenly caught myself thinking ‘man, I’m having so much fun!’. It almost made me cry for a moment … I lost, but even so, I walked back thinking ‘that was the best match of my career’. I think that’s what made me know who I was in the ring. It was from there that I felt ‘this is the way I want to wrestle, this is the style I want to have going forward’. I’m not like SHO or Shingo, going all out against one another, and I’m not someone who can fly all over the place like Ospreay. I’m more of a throwback. I’ve always liked the classical style of wrestling. “