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JUL.2.2020

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Oh My Gosh! BUSHI on LIJ History (1/2)

NEVER Openweight Six Man Tag Team Champion BUSHI on his lynchpin role in Los Ingobernables De Japon

It all started with one man. The wayward soul that was Tetsuya Naito found a lot of common ground with the Los Ingobernables group of rule breakers and authority defiers in Mexico in 2015, but when he returned to Japan, he was acting alone. That autumn, a lot of speculation centered around Naito’s first Japanese ‘pareja’  in the group, the man who we know now as EVIL. 

It wasn’t until November 2015 though, that Los Ingobernables de Japon finally became a group, with the addition of its master tactician, BUSHI. We sat down with the jet black death mask to talk about five years of LIJ. 

 

A glue guy? I never planned to be in that role, but I’m cool with it

–So, let’s talk about LIJ history.

BUSHI: Fine, but why me, in particular?

–Well, although Tetsuya Naito returned from Mexico as El Ingobernable in May of 2015, LIJ really became a unit that November with your joining. So I think we can call you a founder member. 

BUSHI: I guess you could say that. We’re closing in on five years now, huh.

–Does it feel like a long time?

BUSHI: Sometimes, and sometimes it feels like a blink of an eye. I mean, for over four years we’ve spent every day apart from our off days with one another. 

–You’re often referred to as the ‘glue guy’ in LIJ, that you’re an element that binds everybody together in the ring. Is that a role you’re conscious of?

BUSHI: Well, I know that talk has been around for a while now. I never planned to be in that role, but if that’s what I’m thought of as, then I’m cool with it.

–And not just in the ring, but behind the scenes as well, right? Naito once said it goes as far as you being the one to decide on a place and make reservations while everybody is thinking about where to eat. He called you the ‘mama of the group’.

BUSHI: Heheh. Well, Even if you call me the glue guy, it isn’t as if everyone listens to me all the time. They’re all very opinionated in their own way. One thing hit me, when we did that special round table for Weekly Pro-Wrestling magazine, I was pretty shocked to pick up the issue and read it. It was like ‘we really talk this much?’

–But you all have a sense of harmony in a way. You’re the only faction in New Japan that has all its original members, and nobody has ever dropped out or been kicked out. 

BUSHI: Good point. I think one reason is… you look at it from the outside and it appears as if Naito is the leader of the group, but in truth, there isn’t a real leader. There isn’t a top down hierarchy and that gives each of us our freedoms. Really there’s nothing to be gained by stabbing anyone in the back in the first place with us. 

–Naito certainly fosters that mindset.

BUSHI: Everybody’s very comfortable this way. Another factor is that there’s relatively few of us. When I was in the core NJPW group, I’d have different tag partners every day, and that would affect my mindset, but here there’s much more consistency and it’s easier to deal with.

I watched him and thought ‘he’s doing something fun’

–So when Tetsuya Naito returned from that trip to Mexico in May 2015, you were in the middle of a long absence due to injury.

BUSHI: Right.

–You had a bad fall onto your neck during a match in December 2014. The end result was an acute subdural hematoma, a break in the 12th vertebra and spinal shock. Then when you were training for a return in August 2015,  you got hurt again. You finally returned unannounced in the corner of EVIL and Naito for their World Tag League match and ended up getting involved.

BUSHI: Well, unannounced… I was actually supposed to have my comeback match that night with Mascara Dorada against Yohei Komatsu & Sho Tanaka, but I got in touch with the office right before and said I wouldn’t be wrestling.

–And that’s when you sided with Naito. He tells the story that he was up in the north of Japan on his off day and when he was on the Shinkansen back to Tokyo you contacted him. You met him at a cafe near the station and said you wanted to join him. 

BUSHI: Right, it was Hoshino Coffee in Ueno. We didn’t even order anything (laughs). that was the day before Power Struggle in Osaka that year, right?

–It was. EVIL was set for his first singles match against Hirooki Goto. Naito had missed the tour but ran in to attack Goto.

BUSHI: Yeah, I remember. While I was off I was watching him and thinking ‘man, he’s doing something fun’. He just looked like he had so much freedom; he didn’t seem to care whether fans were booing him or not, just doing whatever he wanted to do. That was definitely attractive. 

–A different Naito to the guy you knew in hontai.

BUSHI: And then in October he paired up with EVIL and things were clearly starting to snowball. I remember being in Mexico and seeing La Sombra and Rush- maybe this was before Los Ingobernables, maybe not- but they seemed to be having so much fun. I started going back and forth with Naito. I remember one thing I said to him was ‘If I come back like this, it’d be as if nothing’s changed’.

–You thought you had been spinning your wheels, perhaps?

BUSHI: Absolutely, yeah. That plus the injury made me rethink a lot of things, whether i was really cut out for the business, all that.

–That serious? I remember when you were in hontai, KUSHIDA called you out at one point. Here you both were, junior heavyweights that came from other promotions to full time NJPW members at the same time, but you were in different spots. 

BUSHI: Right. I think the expectation is that you fire up in that situation and show your fighting spirit or whatever, but I tried to play it off as if I didn’t care. When I came in from AJPW, I wanted to do better than even Tiger Mask or Jyushin Thunder Liger as a masked man, but in practice, I really didn’t get through the glass ceiling.

–And what did Naito say when you asked about getting together with him?

BUSHI: He turned me down at first.

–Oh, really?

BUSHI: I think he wanted to know how much I wanted it. I told him that this was going to be my last chance in this business, and if I couldn’t be a part of it, then I would quit. He said ‘OK’.

–You let him know how you really felt. You and Naito have known each other for a long time, but Naito said this was the first time he saw that fire in you. Naito was your first contact in professional wrestling when you came into the Hamaguchi Gym. Were you close when you were both in Hontai?

BUSHI: Well, we would sit next to one another on the NJPW bus, and when I was on excursion to Mexico while I was with AJPW, we happened to both be there at the same time, and we ended up eating yakkiniku together five times a week. He knew me, but I’d say it wasn’t until that day in Ueno that we really properly talked about my career.

We spent ages arguing over whether it should be ‘De Japon’ or ‘En Japon’

–It was November 21 2015 when you spat mist into the face of Doc Gallows when he and Karl Anderson were wrestling Naito and EVIL (watch the match on NJPW World!). That was the first time you used mist?

BUSHI: It was something that I could do to provide support from ringside with the referee distracted. More than bringing a chair in, this would be more impactful as a way to completely blind a guy. It started as a support move, and then I realised I could use it during a match too.

–Was the Great Muta an inspiration?

BUSHI: Maybe on a subconscious level, since that image of him using the mist was so powerful during my time as a fan. When I was preparing to come back I was thinking about all sorts of ways I could change things up and I landed on the mist.

–Last November at the Destroyer Memorial event, you, SANADA and KAI teamed against Keiji Muto, Jyushin Thunder Liger and Kento Miyahara (watch on NJPW World!). You almost misted Muto!

BUSHI: Well, I went for Muto and caught KAI, heh. Well, Muto always said ‘nothing in pro-wrestling is taught, it’s all stolen’. So yeah, I guess I stole it!

–You changed up your look when you joined LIJ as well.

BUSHI: Yeah. Masks are important to me, always have been; enough to where I’ve gone to Mexico to pick up materials. The first Fantasticamania for me in LIJ, in 2016, I wore a mask without one ear covered, and wore an earring; that was an idea I got from La Sombra. 

–Oh really?

BUSHI: In 2015 at CMLL’s Anniversario event, he lost his mask to Atlantis, so when I saw that I was going to be in a match with Atlantis during Fantasticamania, I wanted to take some of that mask design and implement it in mine. 

–That’s the level of detail you work in. To go back to your appearance in Korakuen, the next day on Novemer 22, Naito announced the group name of Los Ingobernables De Japon. 

BUSHI: That was after a lot of conversation. The three of us went back and forth for a long time over whether it should be ‘De Japon’ or ‘En Japon’. In the end we decided that En Japon being like ‘In Japan’ wasn’t really the nuance we were going for, so we went with ‘De’.

–What were those early days of the group like?

BUSHI: A lot of, not walking on eggshells per se, but we knew that there were eyes on us and we couldn’t afford any screw ups. We woudl have a group meeting before every single match. It was exciting, but also pretty tense.

–It was around that time that you started to wrestle against heavyweights a lot more in six man tags and so forth. 

BUSHI: Right. I was against and with other juniros a lot when I was in hontai, but in LIJ, I was able to wrestle guys like Hiroshi Tanahashi more. That was a little nerve wracking at first. To be honest, it still is, and that’s a good thing; if you’re wrestling a guy like a Bad Luck Fale, if you’re casual about it, you’ll get hurt.

Me and SANADA almost fought in AJPW…

–So what moments really stick with you from those early months?

BUSHI: It has to be when Naito beat Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in April 2016 (Watch on NJPW World!). Everything changed with that match.

–You had actually won LIJ’s first singles title on December 19 the prior year when you beat Mascara Dorada for the CMLL World Welterweight title. (Watch on NJPW World!)

BUSHI: That was the first title I won in NJPW as well, so it really felt like being part of this group was yielding results. It was a big step for us. Of course, when Naito won the IWGP, SANADA made his debut.

–You and SANADA have long been tied together. You both entered AJPW at the same time, right?

BUSHI: Yeah. It was me, SANADA, KAI and Hiroshi Yamato who all passed the tryout together, but KAI and Yamato went on excursion to Mexico together, so that left me and SANADA to debut in Japan. So we’ve been together a long time.

–What was SANADA like back then?

BUSHI: He’d studied under (former NJPW wrestler Osamu) Nishimura, who taught him a very classical style, which you still see today, just fleshed out in his own way. He has a wrestling background, too.

–So he was brought up in a very orthodox fashion.

BUSHI: And he joined AJPW at 18, when I was 23. So he had a bit of a punk kid vibe to him in my eyes. We nearly fought a bunch of times. 

–What about?

BUSHI: You know, all the young guys in the Dojo have to take responsibility for stuff and I thought he was slacking. He wouldn’t listen so I got mad and went to hit him, but all of a sudden he took my back, and I was like ‘what the hell?’ (laughs)

–Haha!

BUSHI: And now he has this fashionable image to him, but I remember back then he went out and bought pretty much the exact same clothes I was buying. 

–You were the true fashion plate!

BUSHI: He stole my style. We stayed in touch after I left AJPW, and I knew with the resume he’d put together elsewhere, him being a part of LIJ would only be a good thing for the group. Actually, it was just after he left Wrestle-1 that we happened to meet in the same gym, and things went from there.

I never thought I’d be the crying type when I won the title…

–Not only did Tetsuya Naito take the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in 2016, but you won the Junior Heavyweight Championship from KUSHIDA in September of that year (watch on NJPW World!)

BUSHI: There hadn’t been a junior title match in the main event of a big card in years. It just didn’t happen. So Naito was very eager to troll me. ‘If the house sucks, it’s because the main didn’t draw’ kinda thing (laughs). 

–No pressure.

BUSHI: In the end we didn’t quite completely fill the place, but it was a great match and I think we showed the junior heavyweights’ worth.

–Did beating KUSHIDA of all people for that title mean a lot to you?

BUSHI: I never thought I’d be the type to cry when I won the title, but I was definitely fighting back tears. It did mean a lot, especially thinking about the pre-LIJ days. 

–You had that courage to take a step. Your thoughts on KUSHIDA as a rival?

BUSHI: We’re just about the same age, and came up in similar circumstances, so there was definitely that natural rivalry. He got results before I did as well; he really broke through when he started teaming with Alex Shelley.

–Right, KUSHIDA really made a name for himself when he was part of the Timesplitters.

BUSHI: But I didn’t have a stable partner. When it was time for the Super Junior Tag Tournament, I was put with a different luchador every time. 

–2012 you were with Negro Casas, 2013 with Valiente, 2014, Dorada.

BUSHI: Dorada was coming here a lot, and I thought there was potential with him t make a go of it as a team, but then I got hurt. Right after that, he signed a contract.

–He had a one year deal and lived in the Dojo as a hontai member. 

BUSHI: In April 2015, he challenged Kenny Omega for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. I was still hurt at the time, but I wore a back brace and went out in his corner. It was my birthday, and I felt I had to be there for him. He lost, but watching that match really made me feel i wanted to get back to action as soon as I could. 

–So you were that close to being a regular tag team with Mascara Dorada.

BUSHI: I was, but the timing didn’t work out. That injury really left me depressed. But when I got back, I was able to beat Dorada for my first title, so it’s funny how it all works out. When I finally won the junior title, that was the first time I made the cover of Weekly Pro-Wrestling as well. 

–You’d been on the front as part of LIJ, but this was your first solo cover.

BUSHI: That had always been a career goal of mine. I figured that if I won that match, I would make the cover, and that became a real motivation for me. It was in my tenth year as a pro as well, so it all added up to something pretty big. 

In part two, BUSHI brings us to the present day in LIJ history, and tells all about his fellow members!

 

 

 

 

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