He suffered the injuries five minutes into the bout.
The reigning NJPW STRONG Openweight Tag Team Champions are Hikuleo and El Phantasmo. Ahead of Wrestle Kingdom 18 and their double title match against IWGP Tag Team Champions Bishamon (Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI), they did interviews with multiple outlets, including the Speaking of Strong Style podcast.
Phantasmo brought up his 2022 program with Shingo Takagi over the KOPW Championship. He shared that in their match at Declaration of Power, he tore his MCL and meniscus in the first five minutes. They had a rematch two weeks later at Rumble on 44th Street but Phantasmo said it was mostly smoke and mirrors so it was not tasking to get through.
Circling back to the match at Declaration of Power, the stipulation was a ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ bout and Phantasmo said he always thought that was strange. He went on to speak about the neck and shoulder pain he dealt with in the 2023 G1 Climax and those issues rising again during World Tag League. He added that the World Tag League schedule was rough on everyone. E.L.P. then said he recently got his nose fixed.
Phantasmo: Something I never talked about is I actually tore my MCL in the Shingo (Takagi) feud, in my match at Ryōgoku (Sumo Hall), which sucked because, we had the G1 match which was great and then we were gonna do the rematch which ended up being a ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ match which I was like, ‘Okay, this is a little weird but, we’ll make it work.’ When they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re just gonna call Shingo daddy’ and I remember The Good Brothers and Jay (White) were in the locker room and I looked over, I was like, ‘What the f*ck? Is this a rib?’ I was like, ‘Whatever. We’ll make it work and have it’ but yeah, first five minutes of that Shingo match, I tore my MCL and my meniscus and then had to wrestle on that and then, I was like, ‘F*ck guys. I don’t know if I can do this’ and then we had to do a Street Fight in New York. But that was very smoke and mirrors. If you rewatch it, I couldn’t bend my knee and be like very careful but, I was very lucky that I didn’t have to get surgery and I could kind of just work through it and adapt through it but then, this past G1, I had the issues with my neck and shoulder that I kind of sold throughout that tournament and that kind of reappeared during Tag League but, yeah, that hurt more in Tag League then it did during the G1. I think this Tag League schedule was so hard on everyone’s bodies and we were all beat up. It was like 18 matches in like 21 days and travel days and that’s why the finals went 40 minutes because we were just so beaten and exhausted… Haven’t been to the gym since that and then just to have this nose getting fixed. It’s not the most ideal time when it’s Wrestle Kingdom season but, these are the only times you could get these things done so, hopefully we can make it to Wrestle Kingdom, get out of there and then we’ll be 100 percent for The New Beginning, whether we’re the champions or not.
Hikuleo spoke about his partnership with E.L.P. and feels he did not start connecting with the audience until he started tagging with Phantasmo.
Hikuleo: I really didn’t connect with the fans until I started teaming with ELP. Even when I came over in G.o.D., I still had that BULLET CLUB mindset. Just go into the ring, beat guys up, get the W and bounce. But it wasn’t until — when was it? October that we started teaming up, that you really start understanding like, oh, let’s give back to the fans. Let’s embrace them for supporting us, even after we had been in BULLET CLUB. Being these bad guys, doing all the crappy sh*t that we did. Now, we embrace them and thank them for the support they’ve given to us.
Wrestle Kingdom 18 is going to be Hikuleo’s first time on the show’s main card. On day two of Wrestle Kingdom 17 which was a NOAH x NJPW event, Phantasmo was in the opening match of the main card.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Speaking of Strong Style with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
