Hikaru Shida is nervous for Sunday afternoon.
The AEW Women's World Champion recently appeared as a guest on the "Talk Is Jericho" podcast to promote her title defense in the Fatal-4-Way match with Britt Baker, Saraya and Toni Storm at AEW All In 2023 at Wembley Stadium in London, England.
During the discussion, the Japanese women's wrestling star spoke about how she joined the AEW promotion, as well as how she's nervous for Sunday's show in front of over 80,000 fans in one of the biggest pro wrestling shows of all-time.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where she touches on these topics with her thoughts.
On how she joined the promotion: “It was Kenny (Omega). He also wrestled in Ice Ribbon (where Hikaru wrestled). He contacted me and the first time, I think it was just the first Double or Nothing. So just one match. He mentioned the contract, but I said, ‘I can’t because I have the actress show, like a stage play show in Japan. It’s called Makai and I’m the main character of that so I can’t quit. So I can’t go to the U.S.’ but he called me, ‘You can keep doing the Makai and you can also do AEW two. You can do both.’ That’s so much different than I imagined. It was crazy because I thought it would take longer, but it was like six months. So yeah, when I came here, I was like, Okay, I’m going to be a champion someday, yay, but after six months, oh my God, I’m champion now. But yeah, it was great but there were no crowds in the venue so I think I felt more kind of anxious.”
On whether she’s nervous for All In: “I don’t know why, but not really yet for now. Toni, Britt, I know them well and we wrestled a couple times and actually, I like to wrestle them, so I think I can show my best with them at Wembley, so actually, I’m really excited.”
Check out the complete interview at SXMMedia.com. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
