Wheeler Yuta wants to help shape what ROH will become.
Ring of Honor Death Before Dishonor 2022 will be the first ROH event completely under the Tony Khan regime. One of the featured matches will be between Wheeler Yuta and Daniel Garcia for the Pure Championship. A stark contrast from the Blood & Guts match both men just participated in, the Pure Rules match on July 23 will be a display of technical ability more in line with the history of Ring of Honor.
Speaking on the Under The Ring podcast, Wheeler, who will be making his first pay-per-view championship defense, says he is hoping to put on a classic match with “Red Death” Daniel Garcia.
“I think it's going to be a very fun one, Daniel Garcia and I have only wrestled in a singles match one time before it was on the independents, we went for an hour-long draw. So I think this will be a really fun way for us to kind of show a different side than what we showed in Blood & Guts. We've had the violent physical brawls, and that's not to say that this won't be violent and physical, but it'll be within a very strict set of rules. So where we can really find out who the best pure professional wrestler is. So, I'm very excited for that match. I think it'll be a different challenge. I think for some of the AEW fans who maybe haven't seen a Ring of Honor Pure Rules match before, I think it'll bring something different to the table. So I'm excited to have this opportunity,” he said. “I really enjoy Pure Rules matches, it's a very different challenge. For me, I think that we're kind of in a day and age of pro wrestling where pretty much anything goes. I think that that's awesome and I think it's a lot of fun. But I think that it also creates this opportunity for us to have a very different kind of wrestling when we have these pure rules and actions. We have these very strict rules, like you said, there's no more different two kinds of matches than a Blood & Guts cage match where we're hitting each other, with chairs falling on thumbtacks and giant swings on the top of the cage, and then a Pure Rules match where two punches to the face will get you disqualified. I don't think that there's anything quite like that, in terms of a challenge as a performer, but I really like to use the rules to my advantage. You have opportunities to do things that you can't do in another wrestling match. For example, if you've exhausted all your rope breaks, you can submit someone in the ropes, so that offer offers different opportunities for like real submissions that would normally be illegal, you can use them to get the finish. So, I’m very excited for the challenge. I've been trying to adjust my game in the Pure Rules matches I've had so far on Dark and I'm really excited for how that's going. So hopefully me and Garcia will be able to put together a classic.”
Wheeler Yuta is excited for competitors like himself and Garcia to be part of the crew that shaped the next era of Ring of Honor wrestling.
“The Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view, I'm really excited for. The first Ring of Honor pay-per-view was really nice to get to because it felt like it was kind of everyone coming together in this one place, it felt like friends that I hadn't seen for years, like from the independents, friends that I hadn't seen in years from Ring of Honor. Then all the people from AEW were there, it was really cool. It almost felt like a reunion. But now I think that it was also — now we're moving on to the next chapter. So I'm really excited to see where it goes from here on out to kind of get more of a feel of where Ring of Honor is going to be in the future. But I also think that's up for us to define, to see how things go at this upcoming pay-per-view, and to see how we're really able to bring Ring of Honor and what it is in the future forward. I think we have to respect the legacy, obviously, of what the company has been. But now it's time for people like myself to bring it forward and kind of define what Ring of Honor is going to be in the future.”
In another recent interview, wheeler spoke about Claudio Castagnoli joining the Blackpool Combat Club. Read more here.
Learn more about the upcoming Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view on Saturday, July 23 at this link.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a H/T and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
