As a part of WWE's growing relations with other promotions, "WWE NXT" star Tavion Heights spent a month in Japan performing under the Pro Wrestling NOAH banner in 2024. For the former Olympian, the experience was quite transformative as it strengthened his love for pro wrestling, something that came into his life just two years earlier."I'm so grateful for the opportunity because the leaps and bounds I was forced to have in Japan, because obviously the largest barrier is language. Eliminated, gone. Speaking to someone and trying to get an understanding of them is gone. So now I have to speak through the language of wrestling, which I've done on the amateur level, but now I'm here in professional wrestling. I have to speak this language that I'm within two-and-a-half years new to and it just forces something out of you," Heights told the "Battleground Podcast.""It's a fight or flight. It's like either you love it and you get with it and you keep going or maybe it's not for you. For me, I dug my toes in and I fell in love with the pro wrestling in Japan and I said, 'Man, I want to do this, I think, forever.'"Heights went on to thank "NXT" head booker Shawn Michaels and WWE Performance Center coach Matt Bloom for personally selecting him for the opportunity in Japan. According to Heights, they felt that his in-ring style would mesh well with that of NOAH talents, hence his future faceoffs with names such as Yoshiki Inamura, Kenoh, and Manabu Soya.Heights' last NOAH outing to date pitting him and Soya in a tag bout against Kazuyuki Fujita and Yoshitatsu in September 2024. Weeks later, he returned to the United States to reunite with his usual tag partner, Myles Borne, in "NXT."If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Battleground Podcast" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
