Michael Nakazawa recalls Konosuke Takeshita contacting him in 2020 about coming to AEW

Photo Courtesy: All Elite Wrestling

Takeshita is now heading into AEW’s Blood & Guts event. 

As a part of AEW’s ‘The House Always Wins’ non-televised event in April 2021, Konosuke Takeshita made his debut for the company and teamed with Kenny Omega, Michael Nakazawa and The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson). 

In November of 2022, AEW formally announced the signing of Takeshita. Present day, he is scheduled to be part of AEW Blood & Guts on July 19th. Takeshita, Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli and a mystery partner are facing The Elite (Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page, Matt & Nick Jackson) and a mystery partner. 

Michael Nakazawa wrote a column on DDT Pro Wrestling’s website about Takeshita’s journey through AEW. He mentioned that in 2020, he was contacted by Takeshita about coming to the company. Nakazawa noted that he did not have the power to make that happen, so Takeshita wanted him to relay the message to Kenny Omega. 

In April 2020, it was announced that Takeshita would be absent from DDT. However, it was not due to injury, but to participate in AEW. At that time, Takeshita was still fighting at the top level, but he was out of the title picture, and he had suffered a series of losses to Akiyama and was probably at a standstill. He contacted me directly, not through any organization, and said, ‘I want to participate in AEW.’ Was he asking for a turning point for himself? Of course, the truth was that I did not have the power to do so, so he wanted me to tell Kenny about it.

After the 7/5 Dynamite went off the air, Omega said The Elite’s partner for Blood & Guts is someone who is ‘near and dear’ to his heart, he cares about AEW and changing pro wrestling.

About Andrew Thompson 9443 Articles
A Washington D.C. native and graduate of Norfolk State University, Andrew Thompson has been covering wrestling since 2017.