Kenny Omega On Promotions Noticing His Style, Taking His Moves, The Elite, Wrestling With Emotion
Kenny Omega spoke with Between the Ropes before his upcoming match at NJPW's G1 Special. You can see the full interview in the video above. Here are some of the highlights:
The purpose of The Elite:
"We had a mission two years ago, where we kind of took a step back and we looked at the landscape of profession wrestling. As a joke, we would just hang out together and we would say, 'Okay, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, these guys suck, I can't believe how bad this guy sucks.' And it was all a laundry list of how much crap was in the wrestling world and this is stuff that's on TV, this is stuff that's on PPV. So we're like 'Okay, why do we understand this? We are we the only ones that get this? Why are we the only ones who can change it?' So, that's why we decided to make The Elite. It's not an ego project, it's not because we think we are better than everyone else and we are going to carry ourselves that way. No, no, no, it's because we generally dislike so much of what's on TV and we see that people, the fans, are disappointed too."
Other promotions taking notice of him and his style:
"Not to toot my own horn, I think people have taken notice about how I do things. And they don't quite understand the answers. They don't understand why it is [and] what I'm doing is so much better than everything else. Short answer for me is because I wrestle with my heart, I wrestle with my passion, and I put a lot of thought into everything I do. I use my brain, people think that if they just take my moves that they become the next Kenny Omega, it doesn't work that way. I try to tell stories that humans can related to, because I'm just a human being, just a guy. It helps being just a guy. I think being from just Winnipeg ? in the middle of nowhere ? really helped me to stay grounded. Because I had to work out from the indies there, I had to work for the indies in Japan. Now I'm in this big company [New Japan Pro Wrestling] and I am put into the highest of pressure situations where people not only expect me to fail, people want me to fail. They don't want me in this position. But I don't, so now people are looking for the answer, 'Why does Kenny keep hitting it out of the park?' And like I said, the short answer is because I wrestle with emotion."
Kenny Omega also discussed having his shirts in Hot Topic. Again, you can see the full comments in the video above.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Between the Ropes with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.