Kevin Knight On Wrestling For NJPW During The Pandemic: I Had No Idea How I Was Being Perceived Outside Of That Recording Studio

Kevin Knight recalls making his debut for New Japan Pro Wrestling.

After a couple of matches on the independent scene, Knight made his debut for the promotion in December 2020, teaming with Ren Narita against KENTA and Hikuleo at the Super J-Cup event.

This was a crucial time for wrestling as a whole, as fans were not able to attend shows due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Knight went on to wrestle a number of other shows for the promotion without fans until August 2021, when the promotion hosted fans at the Resurgence event.

While chatting with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview, Knight recalled some of the struggles that he faced during this time.

“It was definitely a strange way because I had no idea how I was being perceived outside of that recording studio. There was no fans to hear or like respond to anything that I was doing. Online, you can only take things online with a grain of salt. So you never really know who’s watching because people that’s watching may not have social media, may not speak about wrestling online at all. So you never really know how that’s being perceived. So I think my whole first year in New Japan was in front of nobody. We didn’t get an audience until, maybe, I was there for a year and a half at an LA show and that’s when I first finally got to be a young lion in front of people. So not only was I learning a new style, I was in a whole new company and just seeing how it was different from the indies to New Japan was such a shocking eye opener a year into already being there. So it was like, ‘Okay, wow, the people actually do like me.’ We don’t know that unless we get a live response. I only did six months on the indies beforehand, so I was still extremely new. So getting those reps under my belt really, really helped me as a performer.”

Knight then talked about how he felt like he was wasting away during the pandemic, as NJPW Dojo members couldn’t travel to Japan.

“Man, look at all the guys in the dojo at that time. We’re all biding our time. Like you said, we came in at a unique time where we couldn’t really go to Japan for those two, three years. So felt like we were just wasting away. Just whenever we do get that chance, you know we’re going to go crazy. I feel like everybody you see coming from that class in that time is really exploding and doing their thing because we got time to make up for it. We got to make up for lost time.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Knight talked about having dual contracts with AEW and NJPW. Check out his full comments by clicking here.

Fans can check out Fightful’s full interview with Kevin Knight in the video linked at the top of this article. More of our interviews can be found over on our YouTube channel.