Bronson Reed: You Could Say Kazuchika Okada Was The Roman Reigns Of New Japan At The Time Of Me Beating Him

Bronson Reed says Kazuchika Okada was the Roman Reigns of Japan when he beat him.

Following his release from WWE in 2021, Bronson would make his way around the wrestling world, including in New Japan Pro Wrestling where he would face off with Kazuchika Okada, with Reed getting a big victory over the current AEW Unified Champion.

While speaking on the Battleground podcast, Bronson Reed was asked about his previous release from WWE and what led to him being re-signed with the company.

“Yeah, I think for me, I’ve always had hurdles to sort of jump over in my career. Like even, even to getting to WWE before I was released, you know, I had a few tryouts and I was always one of those guys that never got hot shotted. I told you straight away, I’ve always had to prove myself, and I remember when I did get released from NXT, I was like, ‘well, I’m just going to go out there and prove myself again and make sure that they know they made the wrong decision.’ I made sure that I knew I was going to get to Japan, but I didn’t know that I was going to have the matches I was going to have, and then how everything worked, and I got to work with, obviously, Okada, who at the time was unbeatable in Japan. You could say he was the Roman Reigns of New Japan at the time, for sure, and to beat him in the G1 and do what I did, I think it put a lot of eyes back on me. When the time was right, I got the call from Triple H to come back, and I made sure that I had that chip on my shoulder, like I said, to go, hey, well, if I can do this here, I can definitely do it anywhere else, and I’ve always wanted that opportunity to be able to do that on a Monday Night Raw or SmackDown or the PLEs. Now you’re getting to see it finally.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Bronson spoke about finding out just two days before joining The Vision that the plans were going ahead. You can read more about that here.

If you use any of the quotes above, please credit and link to the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.