Wheeler Yuta is the guest on the latest episode of “The Sessions with Renee Paquette.” Here are some highlights:
Wheeler Yuta talking about joining The Blackpool Combat Club:
“To be able to be with those guys is such a blessing to have such good mentors, and in different ways too. They all have similar philosophies, but they all have just a slightly different perspective as to how they look at it. I can get different advice from Jon than from Bryan than from Claudio, but it’s all such good, helpful stuff and it’s just finding the stuff that works for me. But I feel like when we started telling the story of me joining The Blackpool Combat Club, it felt to me at least, I don’t know about them, but to me it felt real. Like, I really did feel like, alright, I have to prove myself. If I go into these matches, and I had a vague idea of where I was going, but no one had given me the definitive, this is going to happen. I felt like when we’re having these matches, I’m like, if I don’t bring it, if I don’t really prove myself to these guys, they’re not going to want me in their group. They’re not going to want to be tied to me for the next however long, however many years.”
On the difference between being in the Blackpool Combat Club and Best Friends:
“It’s always a mindset that you are a trained fighter and you’re going out there to hurt the other person. I think that every other piece of advice I’ve gotten, and they’ve all been awesome and they’ve all been very helpful, but I think they all fall under that umbrella. You know, whether it be like tightening up pins or just making sure that certain strikes look good. Bryan shows me a lot of really good grappling stuff that all comes from legitimate grappling. So all of those things I think tie into like, remember what the mindset is, remember what you’re here for. Before when I was in The Best Friends, you know, the goal was kind of, you know, bring some levity, bring some entertainment, like, that’s not what you’re doing anymore. You are now here to fight and you’re here to win. So I think that was the piece that sort of changed everything for me.”
On how get got his name:
“Yuta, that was the one I picked. When I was a kid, there were not many Japanese people in South Carolina, but I had one friend in the first grade, his name was Yuta, so I just kind of stole his name. I always liked his name, so I stole it. So if you’re out there, thank you. My original idea was I was just gonna make it like one name, like it was gonna be like KENTA or something, like all caps, one name. But at the time, I was training in Philly with Drew Gulak and he was really set on like, you should have a first name and a last name. One day I woke up and I had like three texts in a row, like two minutes apart each. The first text was, ‘What do you think about the name Wheeler?’ Then two minutes later, ‘Congratulations, your new name is Wheeler.’ I didn’t have much choice. At first, I didn’t like it, but now I love it. I think it’s unique. No one else has this kind of name, so I enjoy it a lot.”
Click below to hear the entire podcast.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit The Sessions with Renée Paquette with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
