Jay White on Finn Balor Getting Him Into the NJPW Training Dojo, The Dojo’s Difficult Training Program

ROH and NJPW star Jay White recently spoke to ESPN and below are some interview highlights:

What it was like at the NJPW dojo:

“I had no idea what I was gonna be doing there, and I didn’t even know how long I was gonna be there, at first. I managed to find out just before I went there that it was going to be four months. I had no idea if I was going to be training, if I was going to have any matches …didn’t think I’d get paid or anything. But I turned up there and shaved my head. You’re up at 8 o’clock, you clean the dojo and clean the bathrooms and the floors — outside, as well — you sweep the road outside the house. Then, once you’ve done that, you’ve got between then and about 9:30, 9:45 to have some food if you want. But then at 10 o’clock, you’re gonna start training for three hours at least, usually sometimes longer. The training is horrible, especially at the start; it’s just such a shock to anything you’ve done before. Five hundred squats every morning, sometimes a thousand. Normal squats, that is, and then you’ll have jumping squats on top of that. Hundreds of press-ups, just grinding you into the ground in the training there.

Once that’s done you’ll finish up, go shower, and then you’ll go and wait in the kitchen to look after the Senpai, the older wrestlers who are gonna obviously be eating and stuff. So you do their dishes for them. When they’re training, you’re going to do their laundry, keeping an eye out for them putting their laundry baskets out. Wash, dry, fold it. Once it quiets down in the kitchen, you’ll get a chance to go and have lunch yourself. Once that’s done, clean up and you’ve kind of just got to hang around to keep an eye on the older guys, really anyone that’s coming in, just make sure you’re around to help them out. In the evening, if you have time, it’s up to each person; I would go in and do more weights, seeing as in the morning it would be a lot more body weight-based.”

How he got accepted into the NJPW dojo:

“It’s probably, in terms of places to get into, it’s gotta be the hardest. There’s so many people that email myself and others asking about, ‘Hey, how do I get a tryout or how do I get in this.’ A lot of it comes down to who you know, basically. I got in through Prince Devitt — or Finn Bálor — however you want to refer to him. I met him in England, and he was impressed with my work ethic. He went back and put a word in, and then from there, Bad Luck Fale, being a fellow New Zealander, got in touch with me.”