Top NJPW Star KUSHIDA, who left the WWE last April 18th after his contract expired and return to NJPW at the promotion's New Japan Road 2022 Day 5 Event last June 21st from inside Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan, when he confronted the current reigning IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion Taiji Ishimori following Ishimori's successful title defense over Hiromu Takahashi in the main event, spoke with the company's official website on his WWE departure. KUSHIDA didn't dwell so much on his exit from the WWE, but the top NJPW Star did talk about his experiences in the WWE from 2019 to 2022.
KUSHIDA said:
“Well, to set the scene a bit, the turnover in WWE is really relentless. In August of 2021, there was a really sudden change in thinking there. Essentially they wanted to train young wrestlers, under 30, that didn’t have pro-wrestling experience and had come from other athletic backgrounds. When it comes to me, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that left me redundant, effectively. You have to remember I was 36 when I got an offer from WWE. It still really seems kinda hard to believe that HHH would reach out with an offer…So with this youth push on over there, it wasn’t like I had a shoot time machine of my own, so it became ‘OK, what can I do here?’. Everyone was asking the same questions, I think, actually. And NJPW immediately popped in my head. I felt really strongly right away that LA would be the best place to base myself. Even when I was in WWE, I had wanted to move from Orlando to LA, but the company wouldn’t let me; that hurt my motivation a little, heh. I think there’s a little bit of magic around LA that made it somewhere I always wanted to live.”
You can check out KUSHIDA's comments at this link.
