Katsuyori Shibata

right? So I believe they've held gold in TNA since, so hey, good for them.

Eddie Kingston defeating Katsuyori Shibata for our Ring of Honor World title and the New Japan Strong Openweight title.

This was him retaining the titles.

This was peak Eddie Kingston era, right? We were running through

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack Perry defeating Katsuyori Shibata for the TNT title to retain.

So he retained his title.

Oh, wow.

The guys who held it: EVIL, Tama Tonga, Hirooki Goto, Shingo Takagi, Katsuyori Shibata, Tomohiro Ishii, Minoru Suzuki.

Wanna say Ishii?

Correct.

And our last title is the NEVER Openweight title.

The guys who held it: EVIL, Tama Tonga, Hirooki Goto, Shingo Takagi, Katsuyori Shibata, Tomohiro Ishii, and Minoru Suzuki.

Sheesh, what a list of guys.

I know it.

I was like, "Oh, maybe this is possible." Like a guy from, a guy from the same island as me, he can do it, so why can't I do it? And then the further I started watching, the more I started to appreciate like, um, that kind of strong style.

So I, I became really encaptivated with Katsuyori Shibata.

Um, he, he became my favorite s- for, for...

He became one of my favorites for a very long time.

[laughs]

I, I would say the first thing that comes, that, that comes to my mind would be, like, a Katsuyori Shibata maybe.

He's, like, Trish Spears' favorite wrestler too, or, like, one of her favorites.

Um.

Whereas he's perfect in AEW.

His nickname is The Wrestler.

Yeah.

They would have to call him The Entertainer.

... we'll kick it off talking about the Saturday tailgate brawl, so their pre-show.

You had Jake Perry versus Katsuyori Shibata.

So it was a heavy chop match.

Heavy Shibata hit suplexes on the apron-

And so the interesting thing about those is when you're When you're doing a tag league match, the other block does a lot of six and eight and ten-man tags to kind of just fill the card.

And one night, we were in an eight-man tag, but the tag league match was Yoshitatsu and his partner, which was Billy Gunn, against somebody in Katsuyori Shibata.

And at that, I remember talking to the guys.

I was like, you know, never in my life did I think, oh, I really want to see Katsuyori Shibata and Billy Gunn have a match, but I really want to see this.

It's just like, how does that even fit on the same plane of existence?

I just imagine Shibata just head-butting Billy Gunn to concussion.

Billy Gunn just shaking it off.

Suck it!

Tailgate brawl.

Uh, so as for the results of that, the first match, Jack Perry defeated Katsuyori Shibata by pinfall in nine minutes and 15 seconds.

Which they set up a Samoa Joe comeback on the pre-show.

I don't know if you caught that.