Timothy Thatcher Explains Why He Signed With Noah After WWE Release

Timothy Thatcher's decision to join Pro Wrestling NOAH was simple: he needed to keep his word to a friend.

In an exclusive interview with Wrestling Inc. Senior News Editor Nick Hausman, the former WWE and Evolve wrestler opened up about his decision to return to the Japanese promotion this summer.

Thatcher made his NOAH debut in June after he was released from the WWE earlier in the year. The former NXT wrestler joined the Sugiura-gun faction after debuting in NOAH and quickly won the GHC Tag Team Championships alongside teammate Hideki Suzuki. While the possibility of winning gold with Suzuki may have been a major draw for Thatcher making the jump overseas, it was Thatcher's real-life friendship with his current tag partner that cemented his decision.

"I ended up with Pro Wrestling NOAH rather quickly because Hideki Suzuki asked me," Thatcher told Wrestling Inc. "After we both got fired, he made the decision that he was going to go back to Japan and work for NOAH. And he asked me, 'Would you like to do it?' And Hideki's a good friend of mine and I told him yes. So after that everything else becomes null and void because I told my friend that this is what I was going to do."

Thatcher referenced "other talks" with promotions when asked if he considered joining AEW during his free agency, but said, "I gave my word to my friend" and he felt he needed to follow through on that promise.

"We'll see if stuff changes," Thatcher noted. "As I said, if the forbidden door is allowed to be [open] and there's a wonderful working [relationship between the companies], then maybe we'll see."