He thought he would have to pull out of Best of the Super Juniors.
Episode #10 of ROH on HonorClub featured an ROH World Championship match between Robbie Eagles and the champion Claudio Castagnoli. Castagnoli retained his title in the eight-minute bout.
Eagles looked back on that match during his appearance on Keepin’ It Strong Style. He shared that he almost tore his AC joint in the match and thought he would have to pull out of New Japan’s Best of the Super Juniors 30 tournament.
I just wanna point out that I started with tape in the tournament (NJPW BOSJ 30) and then I progressed down to no tape as the tournament went on and that was a mental strategy my friend because I could tell people were eyeing off my shoulder. They were being like, I know something’s not right with Robbie and that shoulder and they’re correct because I wrestled Claudio Castagnoli for Ring of Honor about a week before I went to Super Juniors and I actually almost tore my AC joint. So, I had a pretty bad injury going into Super Juniors and I was like, I might have to tap out of the tournament but physiotherapists in Australia were great and the trainers in New Japan taped me up nice enough and then it was almost like subterfuge, you know? I was goading people into thinking my shoulder was worse than it was and by match three, there was no tape and people are trying to, oh, is he still hurt? Should I go after his shoulder? What should I do? So it made them start second-guessing their own strategy so, I’m just kind of pulling back the curtain for you a little bit there.
Speaking about his experience in the 2023 Best of the Super Juniors, Eagles opened up about how demanding that schedule was. He said he would go into a locker room and see how fatigued the talents were. He hopes next year’s schedule is easier.
This tournament (NJPW BOSJ 30) was so different because it was so compact. The schedule was crazy and I’m sure you guys are well aware of it trying to keep up with it from your position. But holy cow guys, we literally had — once we started, we had one day off. Every other, I guess quote-unquote day off was a travel day which was either several hours or if you’re a prima donna like me, you book your own flight and say goodbye to guys on the bus and let them do the seven-to-eight hours and try to get some extra rest or crazily enough, what I was doing a lot of the times is I’d wave goodbye to the bus then I’d get to the gym and do my workout before getting to the airport to then get to the hotel a little bit earlier and try and get some more sleep so like, that’s probably the biggest thing that I’m taking away from this year’s tournament is the recovery period was so minute, I think that could have been the undoing for a lot of us in the tournament in terms of getting to the finals and I still spoke about it online when I was watching Dominion. That could’ve been (Master) Wato’s undoing in his match with Hiromu (Takahashi). It’s just the fatigue of the tournament because he went all the way to the finals and won. I can only imagine what his body was going through and his mind as well. Now the added pressure of having that title match at Dominion. Hiromu got those extra days off where he got to do tags towards the end so his body didn’t take as much damage as Wato did so, you gotta look at all that sort of stuff. I definitely think that was the major factor for all of us. Everyone was feeling it. When you would walk into a locker room, you could literally see the aura of fatigue on everyone and we wanted to go. Like if you’re in another match and you made it to the semis and you made it to the finals, you could tell they’re mentally preparing themselves but physically, their bodies were hurting so, I think that’s the most defining thing from Best of the Super Juniors 30. I’m crossing my fingers that the schedule is a lot easier next year because generally, we get more rest time. But yeah, I’m not jealous of guys like Wato and Titán doing 11 singles matches in that time frame.
Master Wato won this year’s Best of the Super Juniors but was unsuccessful in his attempt to become IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion at Dominion.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Keepin’ It Strong Style with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
