Post by Jack "The Ripper" Tillman on Apr 24, 2017 23:55:16 GMT
-Let's Begin Shall We.........
JT: "I came back to NJFC because this is where the Jack Tillman that you see today was born. This is where Jack Tillman got his edge. This is where Jack Tillman arrived as a child......but came out as a man. Before coming to NJFC.....I was a skilled wrestler trained by multiple schools of wrestling from Lucha to British style. I was trained by Kurt Newman and my father Borris "The Butcher" Tillman. I had all these skills and techniques down but my problem was that I hadn't figured out a way to put them all together and make a style for myself that I felt comfortable with. Kurt saw that NJFC was starting up a dojo and that it needed bodies. I was 19 at the time. Still fresh faced and with some matches under my belt with Inferno Wrestling and UWF.....I walked into the dojo knowing that I was going to learn a lot about myself and what it means to be a wrestler.
For those of you who don't know what it means to be a young lion in Japan......it's simple. You start off at the very beginning as a Young boy. You're stripped of everything that makes you.....you. Cloths taken away. Head shaved. Your name is even taken away. I wasn't called Jack for a year. I was called Gaijin my entire time there. I was nothing and I was treated like nothing. My mornings started at 4 in the morning.....waking up in a small ass room while sleeping on an air mattress with no pillow and thin as hell bed sheets. I had to help cook meals for the teachers, who didn't speak a lick of English, and then clean the dishes. At 7 in the morning I had to do a thousand squats, an ass load of push ups and crunches, and run 10 miles. After that, then we got to wrestle in the ring with the teachers and fellow students. You had to perfect a wrist lock that the teachers liked.....if not then they'd put a wrist lock on you and then stretch you and wouldn't let go until you had tears running down your face. If you fucked up on a move, then they'd stretch you. You didn't bounce off the ropes right, they'd stretch you. You fucked up on a hold....they'd stretch you. Hell.....you look at them funny and they'd stretch you. And they loved to stretch me. Not because I spoke out or bitched about the training......it was because I was a Gaijin......and they hated white folks. So I got the snot beat out of me on a daily basis where almost every night I had a busted up lip or a bloody nose that was dislocated.
By the end of the night, my fellow students and I had to clean the dojo. That meant getting on our hands and knees and scrub the floor and wrestling ring with soap and water. Myself and some of my fellow students would then go watch old wrestling matches to learn and improve. By the time I went to bed, it'd be 10 to 12 at night. My body would be soar, my mind would be drained and my will to continue would be challenged daily. But I stuck around. For an entire year I battled to survive and learn. To evolve or die in this industry. The only thing keeping me going was wanting to make my old man proud. To get as much knowledge and skill as humanly possible to be better than him some day. That I could make Kurt Newman and so many of my past teachers proud. While my fellow students dropped out one by one.....myself and Kento Nagata were the only ones left standing from a 20 student class in 2015.
Before I could even step inside an actual NJFC ring the company closed its doors and I wasn't able to fulfill the one thing that the Dojo had set me up to do....and that was to wrestle in a NJFC ring some day. I had to wait for over a year before news broke out that NJFC was opening its doors again....and when I heard......I knew I had to come back to show support and to thank NJFC for giving me a chance to prove that I was worthy to be in their dojo.
So this Young Lion. This Gaijin Devil. The man that's known as Jack "The Ripper" Tillman has returned to Japan and NJFC where he was born from fire and rage to be a force not to be fucked with here. While many people come to NJFC for fame and riches and a cheap way to visit Japan in someone else's dime.......I'm here for the long hall. I'm here to be the face of this company. From the ashes of NJFC.....a Phoenix has been reborn and from the ashes Jack Tillman will be by its side and will do anything and everything this company asks of me because if not for this company.....there would be no Jack "The Ripper" Tillman."
Benny Stevens.....Kurt Newman has always liked you. A good laugh to have he always told me. Kurt had told me old stories where the two of you would party till the wee hours of the night and then party some more because the two of you found that one bar that stayed up till 7 in the morning. He also told me about that one time in Singapore where you found a whore House with a chick with three boobs.
-Slight chuckle
JT: "Please understand though that this match between us.....it's nothing personal. I have to do what I have to do and you have to do what you have to do. And what I have to do....and what I do.....is hurt people.
Best of luck Benny."
