Yuji Nagata Details His Recovery Before Winning Triple Crown Title

NJPW’s Yuji Nagata is the most recent of only five wrestlers to conquer Japan’s three most significant pro wrestling titles: NOAH’s GHC Heavyweight, NJPW’s IWGP Heavyweight, and AJPW’s Triple Crown. Having held that last title since February 19, Nagata is poised to defend it next week, and he spoke with NJPW about the obstacles he had to surmount in order to claim the win. You can find a few highlights from the interview below.

On the work necessary before being able to step up to win the Triple Crown: “It was a pretty hard road to get to that point though. Last year’s Real World Tag League, I hurt my left knee, and going into this I’d hurt my right. It was really tough for me to walk for a while, but I did all I could between Western and Eastern medicine to make it in time.”

On his attitude going in to fight for the title: “I just didn’t want to have a bad match, and we had all those fans on both mine and Miyahara’s side coming out. So to have that great reaction from the crowd, and then to take the title, that was definitely a huge relief.”