Triple H Scouted Japan's Best Young Talent On Recent WWE Tour

Away from teaming with The Club, Hunter used his trip to meet one of Japan's hottest rising stars.

by Andrew Pollard
triple h shinsuke nakamura
WWE.com

Many saw Triple H’s recent visit to Japan as merely a way for The Game to get that Bullet Club rub by teaming with AJ Styles, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows. As it happens, seemingly there was a little more to Hunter’s trip than just simply throwing up the Two Sweet sign and taking the plaudits of the Japanese fans.

Away from his own in-ring action, Triple H was also in Japan on a scouting mission. To be specific, 23-year-old Sareee was one such talent who the NXT head was taking a closer look at. Courtesy of Wrestling with Demons, the real-life Paul Levesque met with the current Sendai Girls World Champion and even brought her backstage at the WWE’s Tokyo live event.

Elsewhere, Hunter spoke to Japanese media about how the WWE was keeping an eye on Japanese talent, specifically female grapplers. Going one further, Levesque told the press that Sareee – real name Sari Fujimura – was the future of women’s wrestling and that they would be looking to hopefully offer her a WWE contract at some point in the future.

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While the main roster WWE has so often pigeonholed non-North American wrestlers into gimmicks based around racial stereotypes, Triple H has shown in NXT how he prefers to showcase a wrestler based on wrestling ability irrespective of their nationality. Taking Sareee’s fellow Japanese stars as an example, NXT positioned the likes of Asuka, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Kairi Sane as huge stars, with Io Shirai and Kushida both also big-time players in the current NXT product.

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If Sareee does end up under a WWE contract down the line, wrestling fans can at least know that she’ll be treated with the utmost respect and afforded genuine opportunities should she end up in Triple H’s NXT.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.