Double press conference sees Rainmaker absent
February 15 saw a double press conference for two clashes of champions on February 21 in the Tokyo Dome. At Keiji Muto’s final event, GHC and IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champions AMAKUSA and Hiromu Takahashi will do battle, while current IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada will face GHC Heavyweight Champion Kaito Kiyomiya.
This event is available on Wrestle Universe PPV.
Asked for comment on his battle with Hiromu, the eloquent AMAKUSA expressed gratitude to ‘Lord Takahashi,’ for accepting his challenge, before expressing a desire as GHC Campion ‘to broaden NOAH’s junior heavyweights by beating the representative of junior wrestling in Japan.’ Hiromu Takahashi, who had taken a mask that called back to AMAKUSA’s prior persona as Kenba in the UK, had a more personal motivation.
Harking back to his time on excursion in the UK, Hiromu reflected on a month spent with Kenba ‘setting up the ring, wrestling and taking it down, over and over, sometimes wrestling three matches a day’. After telling of how Kenba’s words pulled him out of a difficult period mentally, Hiromu relayed a story of how he and Kenbai had a match in the 4FW promotion ‘where I got completely beaten. I made a promise then that we would meet again one on one, title match or not’.
As Hiromu completed his thought, he stated that ‘ All of this you can find out, these days you get anything by looking at your smartphones. But that information is worthless. It gets instantly forgotten. This sort of talk before a match might be inelegant, but I wanted to say it, to have you hear it and to have it known, properly. That’s what I want you to have in mind when you see this match. It isn’t NJPW vs NOAH. Dave, Karen, Angeline, Dan, JD, 4FW, are you watching? Are Michinoku Pro watching? Because you’ll see what all that was leading to. And I’ll win’.
Questions pit to both men seemed designed for AMAKUSA to confront his past, something through claims of ‘foolish questions’ that the NOAH representative proved reluctant to do. Ultimately though, the GHC Junior Champion would state ‘though Lord Takahashi has made his feelings perfectly clear, I have no past. What once was has gone away. Yet the one who I have love in my heart for will be at the Tokyo Dome February 21.’
After a verbose conference for the junior heavyweights, Kazuchika Okada and Kaito Kiyomiya’s match received something a good deal more succinct, though only partly by design. Though kaito Kiyomiya was in attendance at the conference, Kazuchika Okada’s music did not result in the IWGP World Heavyweight Champion’s presence. A prepared statement said that Okada was ‘absent in order to prepare for a championship match on February 18’, leading to an angry outburst from Kiyomiya. ‘You’re not coming? After you jumped me from behind after the main event in Osaka? Don’t you dare run from me! I’ll tear you apart!’ exploded the GHC Heavyweight Champion, before leaving the conference to an awkward conclusion.
