Konnan Explains Why He Likes NJPW's Style

As a longtime veteran of the squared circle, AAA booker and lucha legend Konnan has seen pretty much every style of wrestling. This includes NJPW's strong style, which Konnan experienced both through his own tour of Japan in the mid-'90s and a working relationship between NJPW and AAA from around the same time. On "Keepin' it 100," the topic of strong style came up while Konnan and co-host Disco Inferno discussed sequences involving Konosuke Takeshita and Tomohiro Ishii from the ten-man tag team match at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door. And while Disco expressed disdain for the hard-hitting strikes Takeshita and Ishii traded, Konnan was more forgiving, explaining why he overall liked the style, despite it having aspects he was negative on.

"You got to remember that it's in the name; strong style," Konnan said. "So they like slapping the s**t out of each other, forearming each other hard, falling on the back of their head. It's a very physical, very logical style, when you take out the fighting spirit spot that you don't like, which I don't really give a f**k about, where they just forearm each other and nobody sells. People like that, that's what they've been educated to ... I like New Japan style. I always have."

In a little more than a week's time, Konnan will have another person familiar with NJPW's style, Kenny Omega, available to him for TripleMania XXXI: Tijuana. There, Omega will go one-on-one with El Hijo del Vikingo for the AAA Mega Championship, in a rematch of a highly acclaimed "AEW Dynamite" bout from March.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Keepin' it 100" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription