NJPW Star, Kenny Omega is the special guest on Sean Waltman’s X-Pac 12360 this week and talks about how he’s not fit to be a leader of the Bullet Club. Below are some interview highlights.
Kenny Omega Shares His Reaction To Getting A Six Star Match Rating:
Someone had said like ‘Hey , Meltzer just gave you, you know the first ever six-star match’ and I am like ‘ha-ha yeah right whatever’… You know it’s a five-star scale, right, (laughs) you’d think it have to be something real special and he’s like ‘No, look it’s right here,’ so I was actually getting ready to go out and this dude or whatever passes me his cellphone and it had the write up with the six stars on it. And I was like if this isn’t a typo that’s pretty damn cool.
Kenny Omega Talks About Adam Cole’s NXT Debut:
As friend to Adam Cole, I am not sure what I can say or cannot say but I know there was difficulty with that situation and I’m just happy as a friend of his that he was finally able to freely make his television debut.
Kenny Omega on Skills Learned in Developmental:
It wasn’t pleasant while I was there doing it, but then I look back at it and it was an experience that helped shape the person that I am today, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world because it really helped me see more of what the business end of wrestling is like there (WWE). The highs and the lows, meeting some cool people… The biggest thing that helped me moving forward were, Dave Taylor was there and he had some classes. Before going to developmental I had next to no fundamentals and that was sort of, doing cool chain wrestling and using a lot of holds and stuff. That was sort of the kick on the Indies. So when I had left developmental had I not had those fundamentals and been able to do those types of things, I wouldn’t have been able to have a career in the Indies at all… and I wouldn’t have ended up in Japan either.
Singing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt with Daniel Bryan During a Match:
We started singing it together and the lightning bolt struck. I’m like “come on Brian we got to do this.” And he’s like “What?! You’re kidding me?” I was like “No. We have to… Listen hear me out here Brian. You’re pretty much known as the guy that has these awesome matches with everyone. People literally call you the Best in the World and sure we could go out there today and we could have a pretty darn good match but then at the end of the day what’s it going to be? It’s just going to be another good match that you had. Who cares? So let’s do something memorable.” And he’s like “Okay. I’m listening.” … It’s John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. “Well what does that even mean?” Off the top of my head I sort of laid out this groundwork for how it would be placed into this match. And he was like, “I think it’s going to be real fun, but man I got a Steven Regal in the back of my head telling me right now this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life.””
Some of Kenny Omega’s Favorite Matches Fans May Never See:
Some of my favorites, we would have this thing called a Rock-N-Roll Death Match and it’s some of my proudest work there (DDT) but can never be shown because of copyright factors. You wrestle a match and at random… music would randomly quote unquote play and you have to stop what you’re doing and dance. It sounds like a simple idea but the way that we worked in the dancing into the spots and the types of dances depended on the song. I thought it was really creative and I thought a lot of people would like it and not shit all over it… You could put generic music over the music that we used but for example, when we would wrestle and then the Macarena would turn on it would have to be the Macarena because we’re doing the Macarena know what I mean?”
Comedy Wrestling VS Serious Wrestling:
A lot of people think that comedy is sort of a cop out to not wrestling seriously but I actually would argue that comedy is much more difficult than wrestling seriously because you have to be creative in almost everything that you do if you want the comedy to make sense within the realms of pro wrestling… But to work a good comedy match. To work with a doll and make people believe; to make people bite on the falsies; to make people laugh or say you know this is entertaining; to want them to show their friends, that’s tough to do. And when people ask well aren’t you embarrassed? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? No I’m not. It’s actually some of my most proudest work.
Kenny Omega vs Daryl (Hiromu’s pet cat):
It honestly would be the same exact situation as facing the girl (9yr Old), or Yoshihiko (Blow-Up Doll), where the crow would believe and cheer for Daryl. There is nothing the Daryl could ever do that would make him a heel in that match. I don’t think I would ever do a singles. But if it was for example, myself and the Young Bucks vs Hiromu, Naito, and Daryl, I think it could work. I honestly think it could work. Even just saying that right now all these cool ideas are popping into my head on how we could make it work and actually make it believable as well.”
Kenny Omega Talks about how he’s not fit to be a leader of the bullet club:
I’m not sure if I’m fit to be a leader anymore, right now. That is just because it’s to a degree in Japan where if you’re shown working hard, you’re just going to start getting over. People are going to love it, people are going to love you. You’re giving your heart, you’re giving your soul and there is almost nowhere you’d be a full heel anymore. That is the situation I’ve fallen in, being in every big show main event since Wrestle Kingdom this year. There’s really nothing I can do, aside from purposely not trying. I honestly feel even though in America the bullet club presence is really – almost like a babyface entity. People love repping The Bullet club, they love putting up the Too Sweet. In Japan, I know for a fact they would prefer us to be a straight heel unit. We do try to work that way into our matches, no matter what we do, no matter the drastic things we do leading up to the big matches if you perform and you have a great match people are going to love you anyway
The Rebirth of Kenny Omega:
I wasn’t sure where I would go from here (after leaving developmental) Do I even want to continue with wrestling? What is it that I want to do if I continue it? I made the decision that I wanted to be myself. Instead of stressing about all these characters that I thought of, drew up & suggest to WWE Office & Bill DeMott. Which wasn’t me, just ideas I thought of might make the company money. I was going to be myself, try and have fun with it. If people don’t like me, well they don’t like me, then I’ll just disappear & it’s over. If they do like me, then I’m going to enjoy what I am doing again, fall in love with wrestling all over again or keep loving wrestling. That in itself hopefully shines through & believe in the character that is Kenny Omega that is me.
Get it all on this week’s brand new episode of AfterBuzz TV’s X-Pac 12360.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
