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Belief that Kazuchika Okada was “grossly underpaid” in NJPW and speculation about his future

Aaron Rift

During the Bryan and Vinny Show podcast on F4WOnline.com, Bryan Alvarez discussed the news of Kazuchika Okada leaving NJPW and where he is most likely to end up…

“He’d been thinking about leaving once and then he had a meeting with New Japan and he wasn’t thinking about leaving anymore. And it wasn’t because he was offered a lot of money. I don’t know exactly what he was making but people today were like ‘this is the most underpaid, greatest wrestler of all time ever.’ So whatever he was making – if you compare it to what the top stars are making in America today, he’s grossly underpaid in New Japan. He’s done a lot of shows in AEW and don’t think he doesn’t know what they’re making there. They’re making a lot of money.”

“Tony Khan did a Tweet today and he talked about how it’s going to be an amazing year for AEW in 2024 and it’s certainly believed that AEW is the front runner for Okada, that he will likely end up in AEW but I can tell you he’s going to be negotiating with many different people. So I would not say it’s a lock that he’s going to AEW, but I would say it’s very likely he’s going to AEW but it’s not like WWE ain’t throwing a lot of money around and it’s not like WWE ain’t got interest in Okada. Trust me they have interest to the point that [Shinsuke] Nakamura kept saying he was going to bring chaos to WWE, things like that are not a coincidence. It’s like when he did that GTS for a few weeks, that was right around the time they were negotiating with CM Punk then everything with Punk fell through and he stopped doing the GTS. Then negotiations started up again and CM Punk returned at Survivor Series. It is no coincidence that Nakamura has talked about chaos and there is a chance that [Okada] would end up in WWE but it seems very likely that he’s going to AEW.” (quotes courtesy of TJRWrestling.net)