In a recent interview with Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling, two-time DDT Universal Champion Chris Brookes discussed several topics, including choosing not to accept an offer from WWE NXT UK, what led to his first tour with DDT Pro Wrestling in Japan and more.

“For me, WWE was never my goal in wrestling, I think I watched WWE when I was a kid obviously, and then, when I was like 10 or 11 years old, I kind of that that period where I fell out of interest with wrestling for a little bit, and then what got me back into it was there was a TV station called The Wrestling Channel for a short while in the UK, and they would show a bunch of indie wrestling, it was the first time I saw Ring of Honor and CZW, and they would show Pro Wrestling NOAH and stuff on there, which kind of led me down the rabbit hole into discovering all the indie companies in Japan and me becoming a fan of Big Japan and DDT and stuff like that, so I don’t know if it’s necessarily, I think I just, I guess I just have a different perspective to a lot of people, but I think sometimes people’s judgment gets stuck in one place in terms of goals maybe, obviously there’s a lot of my generation that came up watching WWF, WCW, or in the Attitude, Monday Night RAW era or whatever and I think for a lot of people, they have the same story as me in like they found other things and they watched other things and that took their interest, but for whatever reason, their goal stays fixated on that one thing being WWE, because it’s like, oh I watched it when I was a kid, that’s my dream, I want to go there or whatever, but I think you have to realistically look at it in a sense of even if that was what you loved growing up, it’s so different these days to what it was when you were a fan of it, when you were a kid or whatever, and for me especially, I just look at WWE now and then a few years ago, it was just never a goal for me.

My goal was always to go to Japan and do stuff over there, and I never really had any interest in not even just going, but I remember around the same time, there was a lot of people who like, they wanted a tryout so they could try and get an opportunity, it just never, even that didn’t appeal to me. I got offered the WWE tryout I think in 2017, so I got offered the tryout thing first and I remember when they called me I was like, I think I spoke to maybe Pete Dunne about it at the time and I was like, they’ve offered me a tryout thing, but I don’t think I’m going to go and he was like, what do you mean you’re not going to go and I was like, there’s nothing that I want to get out of it, it doesn’t feel worthwhile going and I think he convinced me, he was like, even if you don’t want to get anything from it, you should still go just to get the experience, which he’s right, I’m glad I got to do it and have that tryout at the O2 Arena and stuff, it was a cool two days and whatever, and then, when they decided that they wanted to start the U.K. brand, I guess maybe a year or so after, they offered me a position in it, but they offered so many people contracts and whatever, but like, they really cast a wide net at the time and they offered me one of the deals, same as the other guys and I thought about it.

I think the initial one was like a year or two years thing and I guess if that’s 2018, I was 27-ish around that time and my mentality towards it was like, of course it’s only two years or whatever, but no one knew how it was going to pan out, no one knew what the exclusivity to it would be and I didn’t feel done by any means with doing indie wrestling and stuff that I wanted to do, and my goal was always Japan and I was like, if it’s two years, I’m 27, 28 now and by the time it ends, I’ll already be 29, 30, which is not old or near the end of your career, but I looked at those to years and I thought those two years, that period from 28 to 30, whatever it is, I think it’s important. Those are going to be critical years to your development as a wrestler and you know, what you want to do and I was like, I don’t want to spend those years potentially in a situation that I don’t want to be in or not enjoying it, and my goal was Japan and I said no to the thing, which a lot of people at the time told me I was crazy, that I had like, at the time too, I had no in to Japan in any way, it was still a very unattainable thing, it was kind of like one of those quiet goals that you don’t want to, I didn’t say to people at the time, I said no because I want to go to Japan, because it seemed like going to Japan, I couldn’t imagine it being a thing that would happen, it was just in the back of my mind, it was like, I’d love to do that one day and I don’t want to potentially not be able to do it, because of doing something that I really don’t want to be doing and then everyone was like, oh you’re an idiot, you’re stupid, why did you say no, blah blah blah, all that kind of jazz and I was like eh, it’s fine, whatever.

Maybe 5 or 6 months after I turned down the NXT UK opportunity, everything was starting to move with that, and then, there was like a Fight Club: PRO show one time before, we arrived there and Trent Seven was like, big news and I was like what’s that and he was like next January, Fight Club: PRO show at Korakuen Hall and I was like f*** off, you’re not doing a Fight Club: PRO show at Korakuen. Well, Trent Seven would always have these ideas of these grand things that were going to happen and I was like, yeah b***s***, I’ll believe it when I’m on the plane and then, January 2019, I was on the plane going to Tokyo, we did the show at Korakuen and it kind of worked out to be kind of like a festival show in itself where there was people from every company on the show, and because of that, a lot of prominent people in the Japanese indie scene and whatever came along to watch, and it turned out Sanshiro Takagi came and watched. I met him backstage, I think Konosuke Takeshita went and watched it and he like me and Kid Lykos and then, we did that show in January, in maybe February of March, pretty soon after, out of the blue one day, I get an e-mail that DDT wants to bring you over for a tour, so it all worked out in the end fortunately.”

The full interview is available at this link.