Bobby Fish On ROH, KENTA & Pro Wrestling NOAH

One of NXT’s best, Bobby Fish, was a recent guest on Edge and Christian’s Pod of Awesomeness.

Fish has traveled the world, collected gold, and now sits in one of the greatest stables running today. Alongside Kyle O’Reilly, Roderick Strong & Adam Cole (bay-bay), Fish has taken NXT by storm and looks to do so on the main roster when their time finally comes.

During the interview, Fish detailed, among other things, his time in Pro Wrestling NOAH. He also delved into how the hard-hitting style that welcomed him followed him back to the United States and more specifically to Ring of Honor.

As well as that, the former NXT Tag Team Champion also weighed in KENTA’s unfortunate run in the WWE as Hideo Itami and what he believed caused it to come to an abrupt end.

Fish on his first tour to Japan:

“Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, it was a complete mind-eff, for lack of a better term,” Fish said. “So I remember being there on my first tour and Low Ki was there. I get to the hotel and they were going to go eat somewhere and I was like, ‘okay, let me bring my bags in.’ He’s like, ‘no, you can just leave them there.’ We’re out in the street basically. We’re by the hotel, but we’re outside. He’s like, ‘no, just leave them there. Nobody’s going to touch them.’ And obviously, being a kid from the [United] States, you don’t trust that, but I did. I left them there and we go eat. I come back and sure as s–t they’re right there. The little things like that about Japan, there’s no handbook to clue you into these things, but it’s an amazing place.”

Fish on the stiff striking style of Pro Wrestling NOAH:

“If I look back to the time at NOAH, man, we got beat up pretty good,” Fish remembered. “Not in a hazing sort of way or anything, but, like, as the foreigners, we were there to make them, put the Japanese guys over and whatever. Especially a young guy, a green guy, who doesn’t really know his ass from his elbow, yeah, they really put it to us. So it was tons of head drops and it was pretty stiff and at the time, I just thought, ‘well, this is how you do it.’ So I would think, at that point in my career, I came out of that kind of as a stiffy wonder and it kind of took me a bit after that to kind of wash that off myself because I thought, ‘well, that’s how you do it.’ So I think I was gaining some understanding, but at the same time I was also gaining some knowledge that was incorrect.”

Fish on his time working for ROH.

“My history with Ring Of Honor is a little bit choppy because when Tony [DeVito] trained me, he was working for Ring Of Honor,” Fish recalled. “ECW had just closed. Tony had then been wrestling for Ring Of Honor, so, as one of his kids, students, or whatever you want to call it, we would go, set up the chairs and ‘pay the dues’. So I definitely did a few Ring Of Honor spots over the years here and there, but nothing ever stuck. And you couldn’t have told me this at the time, but I certainly wasn’t ready for a place like Ring Of Honor at the time, but I sure as hell thought I was.”

Fish on the hard-hitting style being a least somewhat responsible for the several injuries KENTA suffered while working for WWE:

“I think everybody was probably going a bit too hard. I think everybody should have laid off the coffee a bit at NOAH and Ring Of Honor at the time because we were really putting it to each other.” Fish continued, “I hate to say it because I worked with KENTA a lot over there before he came here and to see the unfortunate circumstances of some of the injuries that he had here, I don’t know. I’ve got to think that maybe some of that is left over from the years on top there where they were going out and working half-hour matches where it was three, four, [or] five head drops and kicks to the face. And stuff looked real because the s–t was real.”

Fish on when he realized what being a “worker” really is:

“Just being able to work and knowing what working actually is because I’m sure, I’m pretty sure, for the first 10 years that I called myself a worker, I didn’t actually know what a worker was.” Fish admitted, “I thought I did, but I don’t think I was working much.”

Fish on always learning more about the professional wrestling business:

“Yeah, I think as you go along you start to understand there are layers to it,” Fish explained. “I find myself now three or four times a week sitting in class with friggin’ Shawn Michaels. And some of the ways he sees the [professional wrestling] business, and things that stick out to him, and just the little details and stuff like that, you just realize you couldn’t possibly understand it all at once even if you tried. It’s just not possible.”

Transcription credit: WrestlingInc.com.

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• Bobby Fish
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