IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Zack Sabre Jr. spoke with Pro Wrestling Illustrated on a number of topics, including the importance of Yoshinari Ogawa’s mentorship to his in-ring career.
Sabre Jr. said, “Yeah, by far, I mean if he’s not the most influential, important figure that I’ve met in wrestling, he’s definitely top two. I grew up watching Japanese wrestling and being a huge Japanese wrestling fan, so I already had an image of Ogawa-san before I got here, and I admired in the peak of All Japan that he just had such a unique presence and clearly his own philosophy, but then also, for me to come to Japan, especially with the foreign wrestlers, he was so conscious to take care and look out for everyone, he really went above and beyond. The two or so years as his tag team partner is one of the best experiences not of my career, but of my life, just getting to spend so much time with him professionally and socially, and just to talk to him and get his philosophy, not just on wrestling, but on life and I mean, you could see until the day he retired how much passion he had for pro wrestling, he was doing 30 minute draws up until the moment he had to retire, his love for pro wrestling I think was just so apparent, and then like I said, with Fujita and Oiwa, I had my eyes on them from their debut. Obviously, I dressed them up in my ring gear a couple of times, I definitely was eager to be involved with them, but after Oiwa went over to NOAH for his excursion, it just became a no-brainer that he’d come into TMDK when he returned. I was speaking to Ogawa regularly and he was training with Oiwa and speaking very highly of him, any praise from Ogawa is hard to come by, and you have to work for it, so the fact that he was speaking well of Oiwa was all the endorsement that I needed. I think it’s also a nice way for me, Mike and Shane to be able to be thankful and acknowledge the opportunity that NOAH gave to us and how thankful we are for it. I fee like we sort of get to combine every element of our journeys with TMDK and having Oiwa in there now. I’m glad that I got to wrestle with Ogawa one last time, I was on the 2023 NOAH New Year show, so obviously I didn’t realize that’d be the last time that I got to wrestle with him.”
