[Tokyo Sports] Tetsuya Naito reveals that his annual salary has been cut significantly by 24% in this year's contract renewal.
Tetsuya Naito, who is set to challenge IWGP world heavyweight champion Kazuchika Okada at the Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Center on February 20, said he received his first big pay cut in his career.
He renewed his contract this year on January 17th and is said to have been offered a pay cut for the first time in his career. It is an astonishingly large pay cut of 24%.
Last year's poor performance seems to have affected him, and he certainly lost momentum as a single wrestler due to his loss of the IWGP heavyweight & IWGP Intercontinental title last year, elimination in the first round of the NEW JAPAN Cup, and injury absence in the G1 climax.
He said, "Because I didn't leave anything behind in the sense of outcome. Due to the influence of COVID-19, the audience is decreasing, and I was expected to offer a salary cut, but I didn't expect this much... Even I got nervous about this. When I saw the amount offered, I literally opened my right eye with my thumb and index finger," he recalled his nightmare-like renewal.
He continued, “Next year, I want to take advantage of a higher salary than this cut. After all, it means that even if Okada won the G1, there was no rain of money in New Japan. If this happens, I have no choice but to make it come down on my own.” He plans to continue leaving achievements that everyone will recognize, starting with winning the IWGP world heavyweight title.
It became clear why he desperately wanted to resume interviews at family restaurants, which had been stopped due to the Covid-19, he furtively left his bank account number in the sense of sending money after the call was over, even though there would be no coverage fee for the phone interview…
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