Marty voices his frustrations.
The Junior Heavyweight division in New Japan Pro Wrestling has taken a backseat coming out of 'Dominion' with the G1 Climax 28 tournament taking center stage for a great portion of the summer. The division also suffered a setback when Hiromu Takahashi who was the holder of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship unfortunately suffered a serious neck injury at the G1 Special show in July.
Due to the severity of Hiromu's injury, he was stripped of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title and it was announced last month that a tournament will be held to determine a new champion. The competitors in said tournament are: Will Ospreay, KUSHIDA, BUSHI and Marty Scurll. Marty Scurll is coming out off of a highly-praised match with Kazuchika Okada at 'All In' and matches like the one Marty had with Okada makes him want to do more in Japan. He is relegated to the Junior Heavyweight division but would like to compete against the Kota Ibushi's and Hiroshi Tanahashi's of the world and voiced his frustrations about it when he was interviewed by ProWrestling.com's Mike Killam and Doug Enriquez prior to his match at 'All In'.
“In Japan there’s a massive emphasis on Junior Heavyweight and Heavyweight, and that’s kind of been my gripe whilst I’ve been in New Japan." Marty said. "The fact that there is juniors, and for some reason – they’re given a lot of time, and they are celebrated, but I feel like they are looked at as ‘less than’ than the heavyweights. If I’m doing a tag team match and I’m teaming up with Cody, I have to come out to their music because they’re heavyweights and I’m a junior heavyweight. That always kind of pissed me off." He explained. "In things like MMA and boxing it’s not an issue. The lightweight belts in UFC are main belts just like the heavyweights. It’s not based on the weight limit – that seems like such an old concept now – it’s based on drawing ability and everything else. It’s been a big gripe of mine in New Japan. The matchups as well. I’d love to wrestle Ibushi. I’d love to wrestle Tanahashi or Okada. That can’t happen in New Japan, and so now with this platform of All In that we’ve got talent from all over the world, we can do these kind of dream match scenarios.”
There were eleven matches total that took place on the 'All In' card and to hear what our crew thought about each one of those, check out the Fightful post-'All In' podcast.
