NWA Star Nick Aldis Wants The "Fetishizing" Of Japanese Wrestling To End

Throughout his career, NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis has wrestled all over the world. He has faced off against Colt Cabana in China, Brad Slayer at Carrow Road in Norwich, England, and he and Samoa Joe even enjoyed a reign as GHC Tag Team Champions in Pro Wrestling NOAH.

During a recent appearance on Straight To Hell with Cultaholic's Ross Tweddell, Aldis revealed one of the things that annoys him the most in professional wrestling is the "fetishizing" of western wrestling fans towards Japanese wrestling. Whereby those who follow Japanese wrestling think they're better than those who do not and that anything in wrestling is better simply because it happened in Japan.

The National Treasure said: "I really want to qualify this point before I make it because I know that clickbaiters are going to pick this up and turn it into something it's not, but I need the western wrestling's obsession with Japanese wrestling to just calm down a little bit. I've wrestled in Japan and I love going to Japan but I'll be honest with you, I don’t love wrestling in Japan because it hurts. It’s really physically taxing and I don't get the same adrenaline rush from it because the audience don't react. It's like I'm killing myself and its *light clapping*. What I mean by this, I understand and respect that they have their own thing and there are some guys who are phenomenal and there are some who are some of the best ever. Legends. But it works for their culture. It works for that audience.

"And I'm just so over this snobby sort of misconception that has sort of bled into the overall lexicon of modern wrestling that somehow if it's Japanese, it's better. Like, this is how they do it in Japan…What I’m talking is this sort of almost fetishizing of anything that's Japanese and somehow that makes it better. The ironic thing is you're working the audience because most of them have never been to Japan, they've never been in a Japanese audience, they're not Japanese. They've just been co-opted to believe 'oh its Japanese, it must be better. I better agree or everyone else will think I'm stupid or everyone will think I'm not elevated enough as a wrestling fan. I'm not knowledgeable enough.' It’s this sort of weird snobby sort of culture that exists now."