During a recent Q&A with Pro Wrestling Junkies, AEW EVP Kenny Omega commented what it meant to him when he won the IWGP Heavyweight title from Kazuchika Okada in 2018, and more. You can check out some highlights below:
On winning the IWGP heavyweight title: “All I can do is be honest. That’s the best I can do. To me, the win over [Kazuchika] Okada was more than just winning a belt. That was an accomplishment that it — you know, in what we do in wrestling, it’s sort of like people look at belts as certain representations for all different types of things. It could be a reward, it can be a bartering chip. It could be a tool and used in a storyline angle or something like that, but for what it represented to me and what it meant for the company to trust that belt to me at that time when Okada was the most dominant IWGP Heavyweight Champion in all of New Japan’s history, it had really been an accomplishment that I know for a fact wasn’t at first meant for me.”
“And I knew that it was something wasn’t at first something they felt that they could trust me with. And it for me was kind of a — I felt like for what I had to go through, and I don’t just mean what I had to go through for my entire career until that time, I guess I could say when I knew my career was heading to where I ended up, and that would date back to when [Doc] Gallows and [Karl] Anderson and AJ [Styles] and [Shinsuke] Nakamura, when they left on a day’s notice to WWE. Everything changed after that day, and I was kind of thrust on a moment’s notice into an angle that no one believed in me in, and it was just kind of a placeholder angle for lack of a better idea. It was panic booking, and it wasn’t something that was meant to last. And so for me to take that idea, and I was just being used as a tool to buy the company time, but then to make it my own, to start The Elite, to kickstart something very fresh with The Bullet Club, to being able to convince the company to trust me with a ladder match, to then their top star getting injured, to taking a lot of risks and putting myself on the line in a ladder match against Michael Elgin to then doing everything that I could to have very separate and unique and standout performances in the G1, when they didn’t have a clear-cut winner as to who would take it to doing what I could with the the result of that G1 tournament and then the first Okada match, the second one, the third one when my knee was blown out, and I had just a terrible head injury that I’ll go into some other time in my career. It’s a long story. The western expansion, the US title, the thing with [Chris] Jericho, and finally, the best 2-out-of-3 falls match with Okada, it just was — it was putting myself out there in all of these situations that no one had seen that I didn’t know I would be able to do. They’re all just huge chances.”
On his chemistry with Okada: “And it wasn’t just me. Okada was right there with me because we both had to take those changes together. And I think we just sort of found this very sort of chemistry that you only find with certain people that you meet on the planet. So yeah, it was a very cool storied couple years, and I think it wasn’t for all these pit stops along the way that led to these very notable matches and altercations and sort of unique happenings in New Japan, I would not have been awarded that belt.”
On what it’s like having the AEW title now: “And I think in the sake of the AEW title, it was kind of like, people kind of thought, ‘Hey, just take that belt. This is your company man. And it’s like, ‘No, no, no. This is about building new stars.’ Everyone knows what I can do. I’ve destroyed myself. There are people around the world that are in the position like how I was, they’re still healthy, unlike me. And they can give the world a lot that no one has seen, and I wanted to that what we first put on display with the company. And now, I’ve sort of had these new types of stories to tell, and it’s going to be very different from the Kenny Omega that they’ve seen up to this point. But yeah, it’s not that I don’t believe it’s a huge accomplish. Holding that belt was a huge responsibility, and it was a huge, huge accomplish because TV wrestling’s very difficult, and just being able to have the responsibility of being a champion during the COVID era, it’s also very difficult because you not only have to worry about performing on a week-to-week basis, but you also have to worry about your health and everybody else’s health, and the fans’ health. There are so many factors that go into every performance, and it’s a very different set of challenges, but I would say from a pure wrestling perspective, I would say, IWGP is going to be the peak for me.”
