Los Ingobernables member Shingo Takagi spoke with NJPW to talk all things pro-wrestling. Highlights from the interview are below.
His favorite match he’s ever had:
Definitely June 5 2019, the Best of the Super Juniors match with Will Ospreay sticks with me. I’d been undefeated in eight months. Certainly the result wasn’t what I had envisaged, but it changed my viewpoint to become an openweight wrestler and then a true heavyweight.
What he would have done if he beat Ospreay:
Yeah. I had the idea to at one point be able to say ‘hey, you can clearly see, I have no competition left in the junior heavyweight division, so I’m going heavyweight’. But then I lost, so that screwed that up, and I went into the G1 as an openweight. That said, this match; I really put my absolute all into wrestling Ospreay and still ended up losing. It was just unreal.
Origin of the Pumping Bomber lariat:
Lariats are just such an iconic pro-wrestling move. I’m in my 15th year in the business now, but I always knew I wanted to use lariats when I became a professional wrestler. Even when I was in judo club in high school we’d trade lariats during breaks in training. Messing about and wrestling kinda goes hand in hand with judo club, hah. Lariats just scream pro-wrestling, don’t you think? Even though it isn’t something you’d think of trainee wrestlers using, I thought that if I started using it, I could gradually work on it and develop it. I was working on that lariat from a real early stage and it gradually got to the point where I could use it as a finish. But I didn’t want it to just be called a lariat. I wanted it to be called *something* lariat or *something* Bomber, after Hulk Hogan’s Ax Bomber. I’m a huge fan of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, ‘Pumping Iron’. It always gets me fired up for matches and gym sessions. So I took the Pumping from that. When I shoot with the left arm though, you can call that a ‘Dragon Lariat’ or something.