Daniel Makabe Says NXT Needs A Guy Like Timothy Thatcher, Credits Their Matches Together As His Most Important
Daniel Makabe recently spoke with POST Wrestling‘s Andrew Thompson about his return to the ring, as well as how much Timothy Thatcher had an influence on him.
When speaking about returning to wrestling in October, Makabe says he had experienced some times when he was really down due to being sidelined for almost seven months.
“My last matches were in March overseas and then I didn’t wrestle for almost seven months and then came back and had the one match in October as a part of The Collective against Lee Moriarty, which got a lot of people talking again and then it was kind of radio silence for me because we have very strong restrictions here, especially here in British Columbia so, not only can you not promote shows currently, you can’t even train currently. The gyms are all closed and I can’t — I mean I can cross the U.S. border but it’s not easy. It’s quite difficult so, not being able to wrestle for the majority of the year, right as things started to really seemingly happen for me, definitely caused some stress and I like to think I’ve kind of adapted and I’m in the new routine, whatever the new normal is. That’s a term people have been throwing around a lot in 2020, the new ‘normal’. But… it’s definitely led to some down moments and some bouts of depression because it’s such a huge part of my life and I was really kind of getting into a groove of every weekend, going somewhere new whether it’s all over the U.S. or as far as the east coast to Canada or the east coast to the U.S. or to Europe and my weekends were kind of full with seeing all these familiar faces and meeting new faces and new fans and so yeah, that’s been an adjustment for sure and kind of having the self-realization of like, ‘Wow, this has become a really important part of your life in the last few years’ as things have started to happen for me so…”
Makabe credits NXT’s Timothy Thatcher for helping him grow as a wrestler, noting that their series of matches together were instrumental in getting his name out there on a bigger level.
“Those are huge. They’re easily the most important and best series of matches I’ve ever had in my life. You know, the first one we mentioned was really kind of the catalyst of me getting out of the Northwest and people kind of starting to know the name. The second one was literally — they kind of happened in succession of summer so July 2017, 2018, 2019. The first two were the regular kind of venue in Seattle. The third one was actually at The Showbox which it’s like a really famous concert venue in Seattle that like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all these huge bands played back in the day. It’s like a big, 1,000 cap room and so getting to wrestle there was huge and I wrested Jonathan Gresham in that same room. But getting to have the final match with Tim Thatcher in that room was so important to me, and honestly, getting to work with him I think really helped me develop who I am as a wrestler now and putting more importance on things that I always kind of knew were important but now it’s sort of like, ‘Oh yeah, this is how I want to wrestle. This is who I’m going to be. This is how I’m going to stand out and be different and make my matches feel important,’ and I learned so much just from working with him.”
Makabe continued, noting that he never expected to see Thatcher to be on NXT, but he’s proving himself to be an important part of the brand’s future.
“I’m very happy for him [Timothy Thatcher] for where he’s gone and I never in a million years would’ve expected Tim Thatcher to be on NXT, but honestly, you need guys like him. It all comes back to talking about in pandemic wrestling, you need guys who add that level of realism and who add that really hard and really snug [style] with their movements and with their holds and stuff, especially for working in front of small crowds or no crowd whatsoever and I just think he’s a throwback. He’s an easy person to boo or hate in modern wrestling and so, I think he’ll do well there. I just never expected to see it so, and I’m glad I got to wrestle him before he went on to bigger and better things.”