Juice Robinson’s leaving New Japan after Windy City Riot tonight

Shortly after he was released by WWE (where he worked in NXT as CJ Parker), Juice Robinson signed with New Japan. That was seven years ago, and in that time the 33 year old’s had some promos go viral, won some titles, and gotten engaged. Now, he’s ready to move on to something else that involves “definitely taking far, far, far less dates.”

But first, he’s got match in Chicago at NJPW’s Windy City Riot PPV tonight (April 16). Robinson told Fightful he extended his New Japan contract by three months so he could work the show in his hometown:

“It ended January 31st and then it was a three-month extension. So that puts me at the end of April. I will no longer be with New Japan as of April 30th. So this will be my last match, April 16th in the street fight. It’s pretty cool. My whole family’s gonna be there. It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be pretty emotional for me. It’ll be a great time.”

But after this, it’s the end of his run in NJPW:

“This is it. Support me one last time in Chicago for the Windy City Riot. It’s sold out. You can get it on Fite TV if you want to support me.”

He says there’s no bad blood behind his decision, which sounds like it involved a desire to not spend so much time on the road — especially when that road is often in Japan.

“It’s on good terms. It’s just I’ve gotten to a point where I understand what the job entails and I don’t know if I want to do that still. I don’t know if I can continue to do the job in which it needs to be done as far as travel, being away from home and it’s not fair [to them] if I can’t do the job, I can’t have the contract saying I do...

“I had a great time, though, in New Japan. I did. Years and years and years. It was a good time. But everything comes to an end. It’s bittersweet in a way, but it is what it is.”

What’s next? Other than “less dates”, the only other thing Juice said was, “Moving onto something else, pending and in the process of.”

Could that something else be Impact, where Robinson’s made several appearances over the past year or so? AEW, where fiancee Toni Storm just signed?

Stay tuned... and check out the card for Windy City Riot, which has a 8pm ET bell time tonight.

- Jon Moxley vs. Will Ospreay

- Tomohiro Ishii vs. Minoru Suzuki

- Jay White vs. ??? (U.S. of Jay Open Challenge)

- David Finlay, Juice Robinson & Brody King vs. JONAH, Shane Haste & Bad Dude Tito in a Chicago Street Fight

- United Empire (Aaron Henare, Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb, TJP, Mark Davis & Kyle Fletcher) vs. Bullet Club (Hikuleo, Chris Bey, El Phantasmo, Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows) and Scott Norton

- Tom Lawler vs. Yuji Nagata

- Fred Rosser, Josh Alexander, Alex Coughlin, Ren Narita & Chris Dickinson vs. Team Filthy (Royce Isaacs, Jorel Nelson, JR Kratos, Black Tiger & Danny Limelight)

- LA Dojo (Karl Fredericks, Clark Connors & Yuya Uemura) vs. The Factory (QT Marshall, Aaron Solo & Nick Comoroto)

- Wheeler Yuta & Rocky Romero vs. The DKC & Kevin Knight (Dark Match)