Toa Liona is glad that he got to train at Rikishi's wrestling school.
Despite the fact that he's only three and a half years into his wrestling career, Toa Liona is often praised for having the in-ring skills and poise of a multi-year veteran. Liona is already racking up accolades early on in his career, as he's already a two-time ROH Six Man World Tag Team Champion.
Liona trained for wrestling with Rikishi at his school, the KnokX Pro Wrestling Academy, in California. The school has been home for other wrestlers like The DKC, Holidead, and Laredo Kid.
Liona and his Gates Of Agony partner, Bishop Kaun, recently sat down with the Talk Is Jericho podcast for a new interview, where Liona was asked about training at Rikishi's school.
“Man, it was awesome. My thought process when I first started going to wrestling, I was like, ‘Alright, who can teach me to be the best wrestler I can?’ I was looking at San Diego and Rikishi’s school is in LA. I was like, ‘Man, no better person to teach me to be a Samoan wrestler than a Samoan hall of famer.’ Training under him, it was three times a week, he really took a lot of time out of training to work with me after class or before class because he saw that I was really invested in it. Me and my whole family man, coming into post-football, I got hurt, I was into power lifting stuff and I know that if I benched 100 pounds, it’s not gonna put a million dollars in my bank account. So I needed to make a lateral move here because I don’t know what to do. My wife suggested wrestling so that’s when I looked it up and once I decided to do that, we just put all of our eggs into this one basket, whether it’s us moving to the Bay Area during the pandemic to live with family so I can still drive to LA for training, or whether it was us driving to LA to fully commit to training and hopefully get an opportunity, those were the things. I was happy he was able to take us in.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the duo talked about their goals for 2024. Fans can learn more here.
If you missed anything from the February 21 episode of AEW Dynamite, head over to our results section to catch up on the show.
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