“Right. I flunked my first two tries. The first time was when I was in my second year at college,” former eight-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion and current one-half of the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship team Golden Ace (w/Kota Ibushi), Hiroshi Tanahashi said when asked about his New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) Noge Dojo tryout process a part of the Ace’s High series on the NJPW website.
“Yeah. I filled out the applications, got through screening, got myself to Tokyo and then I was in the Dojo for the very first time. [Wataru] Inoue took that one too. There were 40 or 50 of us altogether,” Tanahashi responded when asked if applications to the dojo were open to the public at that time.
Tanahashi would sing the praises of former IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team and IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Wataru Inoue’s efforts during the first set of tryouts they attended together.
Oh yeah. He had a good size to him, and a big booming voice. I really did think if anybody was going to make it through from the tryout it would be me or him. What amazed me about him was what he did in between doing all the squats and moving onto pushups. Anybody normal would take a breather, right?
“Inoue just kept on going, still doing squats, still counting them off in this big voice,” Tanahashi continued. After two unsuccessful attempts to gain admittance to the NJPW Noge Dojo, Tanahashi was motivated more than ever to become a member of the NJPW roster.
“No, NJPW was always the choice for me. Back then, New and All Japan were both major promotions in Japan, but AJPW had more of a retro, rougher feel. NJPW was a much more polished product, and their wrestlers felt like much bigger stars,” he said when asked if he thought about trying out for another promotions dojos.
“Third year of university, so it would have been around November of ’97. I got in with (Wataru) Inoue and (Katsuyori) Shibata, as well as Nijima, who works as a trainer for us now, and one other guy,” Tanahashi said when reflecting on when he was admitted to the NJPW Noge Dojo.
When asked how his parents took to him becoming a professional wrestler, Tanahashi stated his mother had her concerns but eventually gave her blessing. He would detail what was going on in their lives at the time. “One kid nearly died in that accident, and another was going off to risk his life every day for a living. But they gave their blessing. My dad would say later that when I left for university he felt that I wouldn’t be coming back.”
