The life of a professional wrestler can be daunting: training every day, sometimes twice a day, diets, competing in many matches a week, each more physical than the last. And although the results are pre-determined, their time inside the ring can make all the difference to winning or losing.
But, for Aaron Henare, the grind inside New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) has paid off as he takes years of training across many martial arts and honing his craft to NJPW’s event Dominion for his first world title opportunity this weekend.
That opportunity comes in the form of the vacant International Wrestling Grand Prix (IWGP) and NJPW STRONG Tag Team Championships. To win them both, he and tag team partner Great-O-Khan must beat two other tag teams: Yoshi Hashi and Hirooki Goto, and EVIL and Yujiro Takahashi.
That’s double the world title status, and it carries even more significance that Henare could be the first Māori pro-wrestling world champion for both titles.
It’s an opportunity, and a rare one in that, that Henare won’t let pass by. In fact, he wasn’t even originally scheduled for the event until a call was made by NJPW officials earlier this week.
But in the pro wrestling world, anything can happen.
“Half the job is being ready for anything that comes up like this,” the Ngāpuhi and Ngāi Takoto wrestler says.
“It’s big not only as a foreigner but as somebody who came through their system as well [and being] the first Māori to do it.”
Should he win, he’s hoping to bring the IWGP and NJPW STRONG tag team titles back to Aotearoa.
“Sometimes people get thrown into those world championship matches and then just get wiped the floor with. What they do in Japan is that they make sure you’re at that level before they put you into that. Their culture isn’t about big, drastic jumps, they’re about incremental progression: little by little by little.
“I think [tag team] is an easy middle ground, not easy to get here but it’s a good middle ground, especially for where I am right now.”
His tag partner for Dominion, Great-O-Khan, brings years of worldwide and local experience, as well as being a two-time former IWGP tag team champion. It’s a partnership that first started when Henare and O-Khan came up in NJPW’s Young Lions rookie system together.
And should O-Khan and Henare win at Dominion, held in Osaka, they would become the 100th championship holders of both titles.
Not to take the status of the title match away, 2023 has been a big year for Henare, learning more about his whakapapa and te ao Māori.
While he may portray being Māori inside the squared circle, it’s something he is learning to live by day by day.
“[Māori] are living proof that you can survive. We survived at sea for 10 months with no food, compasses or technology. So it’s a big motivation.”
Henare will return to Aotearoa later on July 1 for his Warrior Wrestling promotion’s event, Matariki Rumble, at Pakuranga College. Whether the hometown crowd gets to see Henare with two world tag team titles is yet to be decided.
Catch Aaron Henare’s match at NJPW’s Dominion this Sunday night from 9pm NZ time.
