In the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Lance Archer gave his thoughts on Davey Boy Smith Jr leaving NJPW and whether he wants to stick with tag team wrestling or become a singles wrestler now that his tag partner is gone. Here are highlights:
On Smith leaving the promotion: “Yeah, you know, this business changes all the time. It changes on a dime. Guys are here, guys are gone, guys change, guys move. In this business right now, there’s so many options, there’s so many ways and places for guys to go and wrestle. And women too, don’t get me wrong, don’t forget the ladies out there. But there’s so many options. The independent scene is so strong. Him choosing to go his own path, you know, I respect what he’s doing and the choices he’s made and what not. For me personally as a singles wrestler, like I said, it’s my time to prove to the world that I’m more than just a tag team guy. Yeah, KES was an amazing tag team, it’s a really big part of my history in Japan and the world of professional wrestling, but for me I’m looking at this as a real opportunity to show everybody what I can do, what I’ve always been able to do and what they didn’t even realize I could do.”
On why he got better in NJPW, how NJPW differs from other promotions: “I say this all the time, guys say, ‘What’s it take to make it in New Japan?’ or ‘What’s it take to make it in the business?’ or whatever the case may be. And I always say confidence is the biggest part of anybody’s career. You can do all the moves, you can have all the words and all that stuff but if you don’t do it confidently, people don’t understand or believe what you’re doing. That’s what New Japan gave to me that I’d never had in my career. I’ve been very lucky in my nineteen years to work with some of the biggest companies in the world. Five years with TNA when it first started and was growing and becoming something special at that time. A very short-lived experience with WWE. And then when I got to New Japan, it was one of those things where I would go have matches, I would come back and they would go, ‘That was very good. Love it. But we need bigger. Stronger. We need more monster.’ ‘More monster’ was something I heard more often than not. ‘More monster. More scary. More big. More strong.’ I was never held back in any sense. It was never like, ‘Oh that was great, you know, don’t do that, so and so does that. Or don’t do that, we gotta tone it back here and there.’ I heard those things in my career at different points and different places. And in Japan it was always ‘that’s good but more big, more strong, more monster.’ So every time I came back, I was like, ‘Okay cool. I’ll give you bigger. I’ll give you strong. I’ll give you more monster. And it just helped me find my confidence in who I always should have been in this business and in my career. Japan and the people and the push and the confidence that they gave me is something that absolutely changed me, who I was, and everything that I was and what I always should have been.”Click Here: Hurricanes rugby store