Bishop Kaun Reflects On NJPW Tour In 2023, Getting Compliments From Shingo Takagi And Hiroshi Tanahashi

Bishop Kaun reflects on his tour with NJPW.

In late 2023, Kaun and Toa Liona embarked on a multi-week tour with NJPW, competing in 17 different matches for the promotion. The majority of those matches took place as a part of the World Tag League tournament.

Speaking with Limping Ain’t Easy, Bishop Kaun first reflected on facing one of the promotion’s top factions, Los Ingobernables de Japon, in ROH.

“That was awesome. I feel like I’m pretty confident, I feel like that gave me another level of confidence. We got to wrestle Shingo, I can’t remember the other two guys names unfortunately. But I got to have this sequence with Shingo and I remember stopping him at the hotel later and I was like, ‘Hey, any feedback?’ He was like, ‘No, you’re good.’ [laughs]”

Kaun went on to say that his tour in Japan was one of the best experiences of his life.

“But then going to Japan, I was like, ‘Alright, this is a good test cause TV is one thing but now this is our first tour, we’re there for 23 days, that’s a long time. We have 17 matches, never done that before. That tour, if I never get to do it again, that’s probably one of the best experiences of my life. You feel like every day you went out there, you had to prove yourself to these people. Even the first day that you get there, everyone’s a little [skeptical], they’re not even that approachable to you but by the end of the tour, everyone’s hugging, everyone’s like brothers. We got to wrestle Okada and Tanahashi for very last match and Tanahashi comes up to me and he’s like, ‘Yo, you’re jacked.’ He was like, ‘You look great, are your abs real?’ Everyone was easy to work with and I feel like Toa and I got into a really good grove. I wanted to come back to it with that respect of like, you go to Japan, you conquer Japan, and you come back and I feel like you become a bigger star, you get more opportunities. Yeah, so. It was an amazing trip.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Kaun talked about wanting more opportunities in AEW/ROH. Check out his full comments on the subject by clicking here.

Kaun and Liona last wrestled on the August 27 edition of AEW Dynamite. Check out Fightful’s full recap on the show by clicking here.

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