Clark Connors is unhappy with Katsuyori Shibata.
The new Bullet Club member discussed his former trainer (in character) during an interview with Wrasslerap. He begins by talking about the torturous training Shibata would put the LA Dojo students through and how he thinks he was purposefully breaking them down for his own benefit.
There was little things that I was doing before I started in the LA Dojo, in terms of my wrestling style, that I thought were really good things and I thought were good parts of being a wrestler, just little things about being a wrestler. Katsuyori Shibata went out of his way to break those habits and make it his way and I’ve come to realize that he wasn’t breaking us down to make us better, he was breaking us down and making us worse on purpose. I’ve noticed this, he would tell us certain things that I knew was wrong, and he was doing so to make us worse so he could build us back up in his own image and make himself look better as a trainer, or look better for the New Japan office or whatever the fuck he was doing, maybe it was for his own ego. There was things like that, that’s what pissed me off. It was going against my own instincts because the LA dojo tells me too, is what really broke me down and turned me into the wrestler I am today. It gave me that anxiety, it gave all of us that PTSD to be quite frank with you.
Connors even goes as far to say that he could have been a bigger superstar in NJPW if not for Shibata misguiding him .
Yes, in some ways we definitely did become better wrestlers from it all but realistically, when I say that he took years off my career, I mean in the sense that in the [way that] I got the shit kicked out of me every goddamn day that I’m not going to be able to wrestle as long. But also, in the sense that I could have been a superstar faster if I didn’t listen to this man in a lot of ways and listen to the system in a lot of ways. Take that as you will, but that’s truly what I believe when it comes to the LA Dojo and the system.
Connors joined Bullet Club at NJPW Capital Collision.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)