Rocky Romero Shares His Thoughts On The Stars Of NJPW And Discusses His Creative Freedom Within The Company
Rocky Romero has seemingly done it all in the business.
From being in one of the more popular tag teams in Japan to producing music to now managing the former two-time IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Sho & Yoh, Rocky Romero continues to leave his imprint on the wrestling business. Since his start in wrestling being trained by Antonio Inoki at the New Japan Dojo in L.A., Rocky has been going head strong since. An in interview with UPROXX, the two parties discussed a number of topics regarding Rocky's career in music and career as a part of New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Romero has been in the ring with a number of current and former stars of NJPW. He would share his interesting takes on the following names:
Ishii – "He’s a very nice guy when you get to know him. He always smells very nice. He smells like an ocean breeze."
The Young Bucks – "How professional is that tan? In any situation I would love to wrestle the Young Bucks; in front of five people, in front of one person, in front of twenty thousand, two hundred thousand, in the middle of North Korea somewhere. Two solid guys."
Warbeard Hanson – "That beard smells wonderful. Like daylight and sunshine."
Okada – "Oh he’s definitely a top hunk. Definitely my top New Japan hunk."
Sanada – "His hair, how does keep that hair up for so long? He does four long matches and the hair doesn’t move. Twenty minutes, that’s impressive. I’m worried about his hair, it might fall out. I hope he conditions it. I’m worried about it."
It is well-known that wrestlers in NJPW have pull about how they want to present their characters. Romero would explain the amount of creative freedom he and other performers have in the company.
"We have all the creativity in New Japan. We really have free reign there. Character-wise you can do whatever you want, you can say whatever you want, there’s no restrictions to anything. That’s why you’ve seen those funny, mean videos of Tama Tonga and Tanga Roa cursing up a storm. There’s nobody to tell us that we can’t." Rocky continued, "Really, to work for such a big company and have that much freedom, it’s unheard of. I didn’t have to separate things or compartmentalize and say 'Okay, well I’m going to use this for this.' It was like cool, the music fit into the character, then this, and I just added stuff that was actually me and not just playing a role for somebody like I did in Mexico whatever. It just all came together and then I just kept coming. I was just like I’m going to keep creating stuff until somebody tells me 'Hey, you should stop doing that, because it’s not very good.'"
The former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion would also reveal some of his favorite moments from his days of teaming with Beretta as a part of Roppongi Vice, and more. To read the rest of Rocky Romero's comments, click here.
