Wheeler Yuta has been one of AEW’s fastest-rising stars, and he can pinpoint the moment when things started turning for the better.
The current reigning ROH Pure Champion spoke with the DEFYANT ONES podcast about this very topic, which included Yuta reflecting on a matchup he had on Dark with Penta El Zero Miedo from Death Triangle, a bout he believes was the starting point for gaining the momentum he needed to be a key player in AEW. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Recalls a matchup against Penta El Zero Miedo on Dark that gave him his confidence in AEW:
I’m trying to think of some of the earlier matches but kind of more fresh in my mind, I think about AEW stuff. Like I had this match with Penta when I was still with the Best Friends before all of the Blackpool Combat Club stuff and that was really the first time that I’d say I felt comfortable like in AEW. Like, okay, this is what I was doing on the independents, these are the kind of matches that I can have.
How shortly after he joined the Blackpool Combat Club:
Then that sort of snowballed, that was I think a month or two before the Blackpool Combat Club stuff started to roll, so that was a really good confidence booster for me. From then on, it just kind of snowballed and I got to have some really good matches with some really good people.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)