Jay White made a surprise appearance on AEW Dynamite back in February, leading to a victory over Trent Beretta on an episode of AEW Rampage in Nashville before disappearing from the show again. It was later confirmed by Tony Khan that the former IWGP Heavyweight Champion’s involvement was a last-minute decision on his part after invoking a “Forbidden Door” surprise, and since then the Bullet Club leader has gone back to splitting his time between NJPW Strong and Impact Wrestling. White was on The Sessions with Renee Paquette this week and explained that while he never signed anything with AEW, he has the freedom to go there when he wants.ย
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“I didn’t sign with them or anything like that,” White said (h/t Wrestling Inc). “I’m still with New Japan but luckily I have a fair bit of freedom where I can go and do what I want so to speak. I thought it was kind of known, there was never one of those sweet graphics put out with me so…”
White also talked about his time training in the New Japan Dojo, while admitting the company’s developmental system has some flaws. The former world champion first gained notoriety while on an excursion in Ring of Honor from 2016-17, then was quickly elevated to the main event scene via his “Switchblade” persona.ย
“My kind of mistake when I went into the dojo is I didn’t do enough research on New Japan’s history itself, the culture, and the way the system works. I really had no clue what I was going into, I also didn’t want to ask too many questions because I didn’t want to come off like I was being hesitant about it at all which I wasn’t,” White said. “I just didn’t know, am I going to train? Am I going to get paid? Should I be expecting matches? I had no clue what to expect so once I got there, it was a pretty big shock. We had a couple days before they started training us where we got to watch Wrestle Kingdom and then after that, it was basically wake up early in the morning, go clean everything, 10 am you’ll start training and that’ll last for 3 hours. It was pretty intense stuff.”
“I’m not saying the New Japan system is perfect, I think there’s plenty of flaws to it. That’s just my opinion. I think that whole kind of respect thing, sometimes that can be overdone. In wrestling sometimes people think that just because you’ve been doing something for longer that means you’re above someone else so I feel like you’ve got to find a balance of that. I think it is important but sometimes it can just be overdone,” he continued. “Finding a balance of that, listening to the people that have been to the places that you want to go and the experiences and stuff like that, you’d be an idiot not to listen to that stuff.”
