In the past month, New Japan Pro Wrestling lost three of its top stars. They are Tetsuya Naito, Bushi, and the latest WWE signee, Jeff Cobb. Recently, former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Rocky Romero shared that he is not worried about the recent NJPW departures.
Rocky Romero recently joined Matt Camp on the latest episode of Busted Open After Dark. During the episode, the former IWGP Light Heavyweight Champion shared that he is not worried that top stars like Naito and Cobb have left the company. He claimed that NJPW creates stars very easily, and thus, there is nothing for NJPW to worry about.
“Absolutely (I feel that hunger in NJPW), and that’s why I never worry about New Japan. I think a lot of it, there’s a lot of criticism out there. There’s a lot of people saying, ‘With the departures, New Japan is shot.’ Let me tell you something, this is the company who creates stars so easily. They’ve got the best training system in all of professional wrestling. Maybe in professional sports. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. You can see who they’ve turned out over the last, you know, fifty-odd years that they’ve been around and so, I don’t worry.” [H/T Fightful]
Rocky Romero: The future looks very good, very bright
During the episode, Romero mentioned that he is confident in the future of NJPW. He says the future is bright thanks to stars such as Gabe Kidd, Yota Tsuji, and Shota Umino.
“I think the future looks very good, very bright. I mean, you look at Yota Tsuji, you talk about Shota Umino. Gabe Kidd is another one. There’s four or five guys that are just ready to rock, loaded into the chamber. They just need the opportunity and the funny thing is like you said is they’re all hungry and they’re all ready to go and now that those spots have opened up and some of the older veterans have moved on, I mean, I think it’s up to them to take the company into the future and like I said, the future looks bright,” Rocky Romero said. [H/T Fightful]
What are your thoughts the recent NJPW departures?