Newman’s first NJPW interview
It didn’t take long into his debut in September as part of the United Empire for NJPW fans to realise why Callum Newman has the nickname ‘Prince of Pace’. With his speed in between the ropes matched with an undeniable drive, the 21 year old has made a similarly rapid ascent into the hearts and minds of the public, and into his debut New Japan Cup, where he faces Gabe Kidd in the first round March 8. We sat down with Callum to talk about his sporting past and glistening future.
Watch New Japan Cup live in English on NJPW World!
Gabe will catch seven PKs to the face
—So Callum, congratulations on your New Japan Cup entry. Obviously this is the biggest match of your NJPW career to date.
Callum: Thanks. Yeah, the last big one was against Tomohiro Ishii at Korakuen. I got to the back after that, found a quiet place and started crying. I’ve wanted to be here since I was 15, and to have Korakuen sold out, calling your name, giving an ovation like that, it was a lot.
–You’ll be wrestling Gabe Kidd in your first round match in Yamanashi. Do you have a vision in your head of how you want the match to go?
Callum: Gabe… he’s probably going to catch seven PKs to the face (laughs).
–He has quite a similar background to yours, starting young at 11, having experience against established names in the UK, and then relearning within the NJPW Dojo system before he joined War Dogs. Had the two of you ever interacted before either of you came to Japan?
Callum: Not before Japan, but we had a singles match last year for RevPro in Sheffield. Ten minutes of kicking the s**t out of each other. I think this New Japan Cup match is going to be a lot rougher too, because I’ve put a lot of weight on since, and Gabe is the same dickhead he’s always been, so (laughs)
–Are you thinking much beyond that first round? It’s quite an interesting heavyweight bracket, with Shingo Takagi and Yuya Uemura, and Hikuleo and Boltin as well.
Callum: Man, I started as a junior, so I never liked heavyweight stuff growing up, but since coming here I’ve learned it’s so much more. Me though, I’m a heavyweight that’s faster than the juniors. No junior is as fast as me, and I weight ten kilos more than them. Come on boys, catch up (laughs).
–Who would you like to see in the final four except yourself?
Callum: Jeff, obviously. TJP, would be nice… and YOSH- ah maybe not, even if I love YOSHI-HASHI in my life. I’ll say KENTA.
My grandad was a real heel
—You mentioned putting on weight earlier, has that process been? Certainly we’ve seen you grow in front of us these last few months.
Callum: Well, when I came in (to NJPW) I was about 88kgs and now I’m 101.
—Wow, so a proper heavyweight.
Callum: I thought about wrestling at my peak cruiser weight, which was 96. But I thought if I’m gonna be a heavyweight I’m gonna be a real heavyweight. Especially if I’m fighting guys like Gabe (Kidd) or Shingo (Takagi) I’ll need a bit more padding.
—You started wrestling very young, right?
Callum: I had a pre-debut match at 13, full debut at 16. I was always the youngest everywhere I went.
—Always the kid brother so to speak?
Callum: Well, when I started- to tell the truth my grandad was a wrestler.
—He was?
Callum: Yeah, Toni Granzi. He wrestled in the 50s and 60s. A real heel. He told me stories of grannies throwing their purses at him and everything.
—Haha!
Callum: When I first started he would come to training. He gave me a hip toss on the floor.
—So was your grandad who inspired you to get into wrestling?
Callum: Kinda. My mum and dad wouldn’t let us sit around doing nothing. To be honest I didn’t grow up in a nice area. There’s a lot of gangs, a lot of drugs. My parents thought the kids had to be doing something so they didn’t get exposed to that life. So I was doing karate, football…
I had Tottenham, West Ham and Arsenal at my door. It was wrestling or football. Sorry Dad…
—You were quite the footballer, right?
Callum: A really good one. I played for Tottenham Academy, and nearly got scouted by West Ham and Arsenal. But I wasn’t sure it was for me. Then one day my grandad started talking like ‘I used to be a stuntman and a wrestler’.
—All of a sudden!
Callum: I was like ‘no way, what are you on about?’ We thought he was messing about. But he said ‘no, no, I’ll show you’. Goes in the attic and comes down with his wrestling boots. He said ‘I’ll teach you some stuff now’. And then we found a wrestling school nearby. I did that until I was 15, and I was playing football as well. Wasn’t sure what was for me, and that’s when I met Will.
—Ospreay.
Callum: Will told me ‘if you quit, you’re a f***ing idiot’. My parents came to all my training sessions, he pulled my parents aside and said ‘this kid can make a ton of money if he sticks with it’ and look at me now (laughs).
—You could be making money playing for West Ham (laughs)
Callum: Bro, my dad was pissed! (Laughs)
I had Tottenham, West Ham and Arsenal knocking at my door. I was dope! I played for Tottenham Academy because it was my dad’s favourite team.
—OK.
Callum: And they were talking about ‘we want to use you properly’.
—Like, professionally.
Callum: I was 16, and it was wrestling, or football. I was like ‘dad, I kind of don’t want to play football any more’. ‘Yeah you do’ (laughs). It was like ‘sorry dad’. I could’ve been really good at football but now I’m here. My last job before being a professional wrestler was working in a pie shop (laughs)
Prince Devitt and Jay White is a good mix to have
—It’s like a modern day ‘Billy Elliot’. You could have a movie made about this. So what’s Will like as a coach?
Callum: It’s weird. He was really nice sometimes and then at others I didn’t know if he liked me at all. When I started with him, he had us do 100 press-ups. And I was 17, struggling through it. He comes over and gets right in my face ‘don’t you f***ing quit’. Grabs me by the T-shirt and pushes and pulls me through it.
—Strict.
Callum: But then afterward he was like ‘you didn’t stop. Good job.’ You know, and any time I’ve needed advice he’s been there. He’d stop me being an idiot a lot. Like he says ‘I’ve done the same sort of stuff you’re doing now, and I’m going to stop you before you make the mistakes I did’.
—Under Will’s recommendation, you came out here in what, September?
Callum: Yeah. Five months or so.
—Do you feel a bit more comfortable now?
Callum: Now I am a lot more. I know how to carry myself better Like before I didn’t know how to greet anyone, didn’t know any of the language, didn’t know the food, so it was a real culture shock. Now though, I’m a lot more comfortable. This feels more like home than my actual home.
–You’re settled when it comes to Japan now.
Callum: And I feel more comfortable with the United Empire guys now. I don’t feel as much like a young boy that I did before, and they make me feel a lot more included. I’m pretty much staying in Japan full time now, so I don’t go home like they do. I don’t see my family as much as they do, just on Facetime for a second here or there. So to have them to be around me, it does feel better. I feel like I’m more myself, and that goes for my in ring as well, I move a lot smoother I think.
–When it comes to the way you move, when you first came in, HENARE was guesting on English commentary and he said that you reminded him of Prince Devitt.
Callum: Yeah.
–After he said that it really became hard not to see. Is that conscious on your part?
Callum: I don’t really know. It wouldn’t say it was intentional from the start, but when I started looking up old school Prince Devitt to watch I saw he had the same gear as mine, black trunks with the stripe up the side, knee pads and kick pads. And I’m a fan of his stuff, so I would do things here and there without pushing that as too obvious. But then HENARE pointed it out, and Will Ospreay pointed out. Now people say online that I look like a mix of Prince Devitt and Jay White, which is quite a good mix to have.
There’s a ton more that I can do that I haven’t shown yet
–Obviously Prince of Pace is a well earned nickname. Does some of that athleticism come from your footballing days as well?
Callum: Actually when I started training as a kid, I hurt my knees, and I couldn’t do athletics in school. Couldn’t sprint, couldn’t jump. Before I met Will, I was only ever doing chain wrestling, not really any rope work. I started doing gymnastics to help rehab my knees.
So then one day training, we were doing rope work drills, criss-crossing on the ropes. And the other kid couldn’t keep up with me. He was new, so I started doing it with someone more advanced, and he couldn’t catch up with me either.
–So you thought you were onto something.
Callum: And around that time I started watching Masato Yoshino (DRAGONGATE) and I was hooked. I wanted to run the ropes as hard as him. I was heavy then, 96kg, and I dropped ten kilos from that weight, and all of a sudden at RevPro I was faster than Nick Wayne.
–Is it harder or easier in a New Japan ring?
Callum: Hitting the ropes here feels like running into a brick wall, they’re a lot more tense, but for whatever reason I’m even faster. So the Prince of Pace thing was kind of out of the blue, but just running the ropes and hitting a boot gets a big reaction. There’s a ton more that I can do that I haven’t shown yet.
–You obviously had that big moment with Will Ospreay and the double OsCutter in that cage match in Osaka. That’s one of the things that will be in video packages for quite a few years to come.
Callum: It was wild. And it was weird- I used to spend a lot of time with Dan (Drilla Moloney) before he decided to turn on everyone. I wouldn’t think he would be the kind of prick to beat me up and handcuff me to a cage for 45 minutes, but there was a moment where Will and Dan were there and it felt like this would be something to remember for a long time. And the double OsCutter, I’m lucky I hit it because my elbow was messed up.
–Oh really?
Callum: I was chained up to this cage for so long I couldn’t do anything. Like honestly my legs and arms were going numb. But I thought I couldn’t just do nothing. So when Coughlin came down with all those chairs on his arms, he dumps them outside and gets in the ring, and when Finlay went to get a chair I just kicked them out of his reach a little bit.
–Trying to buy time for someone.
Callum: Or just as a little ‘f**k you,’ you know. So Finlay gets his chair and hits me with it, and when I tensed up on the impact it got me right on the elbow. My arm was messed up and I gradually got the feeling back by the time I was in there. It reminded me when I was 16, I was being trained by Will in Bethnal Green and he taught me how to do the OsCutter. There’s actually a clip of that somewhere, because MTV were shooting a documentary at the time. It’s crazy to have done that same move next to him five years later in Osaka, you know.
I am the fastest professional wrestler in the world. Nobody can touch me
–So now you’re here pretty much for the foreseeable, do you have a vision of where you want to be a year from now?
Callum: Even just being in the New Japan Cup this year wasn’t something I was expecting. So each day as it comes, but I just want to show everyone that the hard work is paying off. If the G1 comes up, then I’ll put everything I’ve learned into it… Mainly I just want to get revenge on everyone that’s kicked the s**t out of me (laughs). Finlay, Dan Ishii, Shingo. I just want to get back.
–Antonio Inoki used to talk about how important anger was in wrestling and using that energy in the ring.
Callum: I’m a moody bastard (laughs). I kind of do have that mindset, because I went through a lot of s**t growing up where I did. So I have a lot on the line- do I make this work, or do I go back to that? When things clicked for me, is when I started out I was wrestling Friday Saturday Sunday, and then looked for part time jobs during the week. But when I quit the day jobs and focused on the wrestling was where it took off, because if I didn’t wrestle I didn’t eat. It was wrestling or going homeless.
–That’s the commitment you needed.
Callum: Now, when I went back home for ten days over Christmas, I decided that I’m going to get big enough at wrestling to move my mum and dad out of where they’re living. It’s so hard not wanting to leave your family behind but wanting to get back to Tokyo so bad, and that emotion comes out when I wrestle. I just have this determination when I hit the ropes to show that I am the fastest professional wrestler in the world. And I am, nobody can touch me. It’s kind of crazy (laughs).
