NJPW star Shane Haste recently spoke with WrestleMobs on a number of topics including his time in AEW and how it was so much fun.
Haste said, “I loved AEW. It was so much fun. There’s a lot of similarities between that and WWE because it is a national, worldwide wrestling television show, but yeah, there’s a lot more freedoms there to be yourself and trust. Tony trusts the wrestlers to go do what they do, which is great. You come back, and he’s so supportive, he loves everything. I don’t know if that’s a good barometer [laughs] if I’m actually good or not. But afterwards, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m really good.’”
On receiving feedback from Tony Khan:
“I can’t remember what match, but there was one match I had, and I’m like, ‘That wasn’t very good, or at least I wasn’t very good.’ He was like, ‘That was great, thank you very much.’ I’m like, ‘Maybe I am good.’ [Laughs] A big part of wrestling is confidence. If you’ve got confidence, people will see you in the ring, you could do nothing, and if you exude confidence, but you have to have that confidence. You have to have that built up. So yeah, that’s a funny difference of it there, and it’s chill. But the best thing to me in wrestling is the backstage, everyone backstage.”
You can check out Haste’s comments in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
