AKIRA Praises MLW For Listening To Him, Says He Heard Things About The Culture But ‘Things Changed’

AKIRA comments on his current run in Major League Wrestling.

After debuting for the company in early 2023, AKIRA quickly made a name for himself in MLW, as he captured the MLW World Middleweight Championship at a television taping in April. AKIRA quickly followed up that win with another title win, as he and Rickey Shane Page went on to win the MLW World Tag Team Championships at the Never Say Never pay-per-view in July.

In a new interview with Fightful Overbooked’s ‘Indied’ podcast, AKIRA said despite the fact that people told him not to sign with the company, he’s having a great time in MLW.

“People said don’t sign with MLW. You know what? I’m gonna do it. I went to them, I told them what I wanted, what I’m going to do, and we discussed it, and I’ve been having a great time there.”

AKIRA also went on to say that everyone in the company likes him and that he is often told that he’s only getting better and better.

“Even in MLW, I could have pretty good matches. Everyone likes me, everyone says I’m doing great in terms of being a character on screen, working with cameras, working with everybody, [They tell me] getting better and better and better.”

The ‘Death Fighter’ then went on to state that MLW’s culture has changed for the better, also noting that the company will often listen to him when he isn’t a fan of a certain story or match.

AKIRA also recalled simply talking things out with MLW when he wanted to work for certain other company, as the promotion originally shut down the idea.

“Even with MLW, I can probably just be like, ‘I don’t want to do that’ and they’ll listen to me. It’s crazy. I’ve heard so many things about the culture in this area, but things have changed. We’re doing a joint show with New Japan coming up. I talk to people, I invested in myself, I sit there and email back and forth with people in the office regarding it, about what they were doing with me, what I wanted to do, my background. I got what I wanted out of it and people are still shocked that I’m getting the things that I’m getting. I asked! They said, ‘Hey, you can’t work for this certain company’ and I said, ‘Yes I can, here’s the exact reasons why I can’, and they go, ‘Yeah you can, that makes sense.’ It’s not that hard. This isn’t a knock on younger people, because I had to go through life, I had to work at a factory. I had to shackle a crazy Russian to get to this level of thinking. A lot of the kids have this mentality of paper, sign paper, oh I’m not happy now. It’s like, you’re a business. You represent yourself. The merchandise that you put out, the theme music you use, the way you interact on social media, it all adds up to the representation of your business. It’s not just you’re a wrestler, you are everything. That’s the reason the Young Bucks were multimillionaires before a major company.”

While chatting about Major League Wrestling, AKIRA noted that his recent match against ‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey at a Prestige Wrestling show rejuvenated his love for professional wrestling.

Elsewhere in the interview, AKIRA talked about working with Raven in MLW. Fans can learn more by clicking here.