Kenny Omega is arguably the top wrestling star in All Elite Wrestling. He was the main event, along with Chris Jericho, at AEW’s first event “Double or Nothing”. At the end of the match, Kenny was defeated by Jericho, then attacked by a debuting Jon Moxley.
The Moxley vs. Omega match is taking place at AEW’s most recently sold out show “All Out” set to take place August 31st. Before that event AEW is involved with CEO Gaming Convention, when AEW produces Fyter Fest takes place during the event. On The Young Bucks YouTube show, Being The Elite, the storyline is that Kenny Omega is in charge of this show and doing anything he can to make it an extravaganza.
Recently Kenny sat down with gamespot.com to talk about a myriad of topics.
On his non-wrestling role with the company.
So what people don’t understand is that a lot of us, actually, that came from New Japan, that came from Ring Of Honor, we assumed a lot of responsibility there as well. I was kind of the driving force behind a lot of my storylines, behind a lot of my creative ideas. It’s the stuff that you don’t really see. I mean the tech stuff. Some of the set design. Those are things that are new to me, and even agenting matches or working on foreign visas, things like that, these are all things that are very new in my world, and these are the things that keep me awake at night. So, I mean, when we’re thinking about how to plan the show, what order things should go in, how to produce a show, timing-wise and all that, working on sponsorships, selecting the arenas, working on the advertising aspect of it. And then, you know for me, kind of being the sole Japanese liaison right now, not only am I having to do that during the day, during normal North American hours, I have to be awake for the Japanese time zone. And I have to work with our ladies and men up there to get their visas sorted out, to make sure that they’re feeling comfortable, make sure their flights and their travel’s squared up, hotels, et cetera, et cetera.
Kenny Omega
So it’s very mentally draining, and I’ve been very under-rested. And then on top of that, when you strip all that away, I was in the first main event, so I got to still worry about my own performance. It’s really tough, and I think when you burn the candle on both ends, eventually it’s going to start to show. My big worry was not that, “Can I do it or can I not do it?” Of course I can. But for how long? Because everyone has their limit. So, right now, we are understaffed. But every week that goes by, we’re finding new talented people. We’re configuring this team and building a team that really wants to join this project and be successful with us. So the first show, to get it all out, was a bit of a struggle. We did it. Next we’ve got Fyter Fest coming up. Already, we’re teamed up with CEO, so we have a lot of people in the [fighting game community], people from the 10-0 crew there that do hard work there, helping us put that together.
So, as time goes by, we’re getting help from the usual suspects but also unusual sources as well. And moving forward, before we hit TV, I think we’ll have our core crew assembled, and we’ll be ready to just hit it home.
On keeping AEW fresh-
I appreciate all the genres of movie or television show or whatever. Sometimes I’m in a specific mood. Sometimes I want to be scared. Sometimes I want to laugh, sometimes I want to cry. But a lot of times, I would love to feel a broad spectrum of emotion with you. And I feel that when you achieve that, you can engage a larger audience, and you can keep them engaged. When I look at what makes a Marvel film entertaining… What makes them so popular? Why does everyone like them? Why do kids like them? Why do adults like them? Why is it the go-to film anytime a Marvel film is released? Well, it’s because there’s drama, there’s comedy, there are serious moments that make you angry. there’s serious moments that make you want to cry. It has all of those things, but at the end of it, it’s a story of good versus evil, much like professional wrestling.
Kenny Omega
Why Omega had the Joshi women wrestle at Double Or Nothing-
So, for me, there was a time when I was just disenchanted with professional wrestling. Nothing was doing it for me. I felt like I’d seen it all, and what people were giving me wasn’t what I wanted to watch, and it just didn’t seem interesting to me. It wasn’t until I discovered the Joshi, how the style differs, how you can feel the passion resonate in every match in their performance. That’s what brought me back into wrestling, and in a way, it almost kind of made me appreciate everything else as well. So what people don’t realize a lot of times is that there are so much different variety in professional wrestling, in the art of what we do.
Kenny Omega
The interview is very in depth and Kenny gives some long winded answers that explain how he thinks about certain aspects. From his character to what he thought about Jon Moxley while Mox was Dean Ambrose.
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