That’s always been his thing. It was never enough that he was a huge superstar, he needed to inflat his persona even further. He has always made outlandish claims. There are tons of videos chronicaling all the insane shit he says. He said that he used to wrestle 400 days a year because he would travel between the US and Japan wrestling in both places and crossing the international timeline actually made his years longer. Point being, he’s always been a crazy ego-maniac.
Really makes you wonder why he makes claims about people that are still alive. You’d think he’d stick to wild stories about people that aren’t alive to dispute what he’s saying. And he was such a big star that these claims are always going to get back to people that can say no, that’s wrong.