Earlier this week, Kota Ibushi appeared as the guest on NJPW’s English Podcast, where he spoke about himself unifying the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships. Here are the highlights:
Explains the way he felt after his loss to Will Ospreay:
“The day after Sakura Genesis, I did nothing but sleep. Pretty much. Like a reset button, I’d been under so much strain and it was like I needed to power down. So much had been going on, I just hadn’t caught up with reality, it seemed like. I figured I’d sleep all day on the fifth, and then when I woke up on the sixth, it hit me the belt wasn’t there. That’s when I went ‘oh, wait, hang on, it isn’t winter anymore’. It was like ‘what happened to winter?’. Like I was coming out of a time machine. ‘what’s the date? What month is it?’ It seemed incredible to me that the cherry blossoms had come and gone. I think I was just numb to everything. Like I had been wearing winter clothes because everyone else was. I didn’t notice things were changing. I didn’t notice the cherry blossoms had bloomed, and then fallen.”
On the matches he competed in at January’s Wrestle Kingdom event:
“I’ve said it before, but I think looking back, I still would have preferred to face Jay White on January 4 and then Naito on night two. I think that would have cemented me as a champion better. As it was, even though I’d beaten Jay on the fifth, it didn’t feel like a culmination. Finally winning those titles on January 4 felt a little anticlimactic, because I knew I had the next day as well.”
On fans reaction to him unifying the titles:
“Mixed, I don’t know. I think from fans and wrestlers alike, I’d say 99% were against it. But that was a river we had to cross, I think. Just something I had to take and move on.”
(H/T and transcribed by 411Mania)
