Big Japan Pro Wrestling’s Yuji Okabayashi will be taking an indefinite hiatus from the ring beginning at the end of next month. According to a report from Tokyo Sports, Okabayashi announced the news during a press conference on Wednesday. He said,
“At the time of my debut, I had decided that I would wrestle until I was 40.’ Now that that year has come, I’m thinking about the future. Once I got out of the ring, I wondered whether I could continue with my current wrestling style and whether I could put on a match that would satisfy audiences… I’ve been talking to the president [Eiji Tosaka of BJPW] and talking with my family, and I will be thinking about it during this rest period.”
In other news, Gia Miller recently appeared on Sami Callihan’s “Callihan Uncensored” podcast to discuss a variety of topics, including her time working on the Impact commentary booth.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On her progress doing commentary: “I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve been doing commentary on BTI now for the past couple of months and I feel like I get better and better each time. This past weekend I feel like I called the best match that I’ve called so far, and that’s all I can hope to do is keep doing that over and over again.”
On if she ever thought interviews and commentary would be her future: “I thought that I would definitely do that one day, but I kind of thought it would be the other way around because I think that’s how you think about it. You get into wrestling to be a wrestler, everyone does, and then you end up doing something else. I only had 10 matches by the time I got the job with IMPACT, so it was like, I’m dropping everything.”
On how she ended up signing with Impact: “I was not even a year in, maybe six months. It just kind of fell in my lap and then COVID happened and I was, words straight from Scott D’Amore, ‘I was better than nothing.’ … It is so much ‘right place, right time,’ because that is what happened to me. I happened to also have a journalism degree, so I’ve done interviews, I’ve done on camera work. I’m a performer, so I’m comfortable performing. I’m not afraid. If anything, I’ll embarass myself. You can’t be afraid of people laughing at you. You can’t be afraid of embarassing yourself. You have to be able to laugh at yourself because that’s the only way you can get better is if you watch yourself back. I know a lot of people have problems with listening to themselves when they’re recorded, or watching themselves back. You have to get used to it or else you’ll never get better.”
