PJ Black On Who The Top 3 ROH Stars Are, Reveals A Key Factor For Him Signing With ROH
From South Africa to the UK to WWE to Impact to Lucha Underground to NWA, PJ Black has wrestled all over the world. He now calls Ring of Honor home after signing a deal with them earlier this year but is happy to see that there are so many other wrestling options out there.
Black talked with Wrestling Inc's Joey G. about signing with ROH and where he sees wrestling in five years from now.
"I have no idea but I'm excited because of companies like AEW," Black admitted. "Guys have more options now and a lot of my friends are making way more money. I feel like the popularity of wrestling has grown and it's mainstream now. It's pop culture and it's cool to be a wrestling fan again," Black said before partially attributing the popularity in wrestling to superhero movies as wrestlers are also seen in the same light as them.
Black had never wrestled in ROH before appearing in their Survival of the Fittest tournament last November. After a couple of matches he was offered a contract and he was asked who he was most looking forward to facing in ROH.
"People ask me this all the time and it changes every week," revealed Black. "This was actually a key factor in me signing with ROH. I looked at the roster and was like, 'Yeah, I could have great matches with all of them.' The owner of ROH looked at me the other day and was like, 'How did you get all of these marquee matches?' I was like, 'C'mon man, that's why you signed me!'
"They give me creative freedom," Black also said about what attracted him to ROH. "The last three PPVs I worked they gave me time and said, 'Just do you. Do your thing.' I feel like the office has a lot of faith in me and I'm just excited about the next couple of weeks."
Black then listed Bandido, Jeff Cobb and RUSH as the top three guys in the company but had high praise for many others. He thinks Matt Taven is doing a fantastic job as a heel champion and would love to face him someday.
Black was a three-time tag champion in WWE and was a Trios champion with Lucha Underground. He has lots of experience as a tag competitor but has been competing as a singles competitor for ROH. He was asked if he ever foresaw himself being a part of a tag team again.
"Oh yeah, tag team wrestling is so much fun and what's big in wrestling now is the trios, the six-man tags. ROH and New Japan have [six-man] titles; I'm surprised WWE doesn't have them yet. That's a big thing ? the lucha style," Black said before adding that all of the different wrestling styles from lucha to American to strong-style have almost become like one hybrid style.
"I love singles wrestling and I love tag teams because it's different ways of storytelling. It's not exactly the same and that's what we do ? we tell stories and it's fun. I definitely see myself in some tags coming up and I actually pitched some faction stuff to [ROH]. I don't know if they're gonna look at it, but we shall see."
You can watch the full interview in the video above.