Kenny Omega: There Is No Kenny Omega Copy-And-Paste Formula
Kenny Omega is widely regarded as one of, if not the, best wrestlers in the world today. The self-proclaimed “Best Bout Machine” has had classics with the likes of Kazuchika Okada, Chris Jericho, Tetsuya Naito, The Young Bucks, and many more.
But Kenny Omega doesn’t study wrestling to become a great wrestler.
“A lot of wrestlers are wrestling fans at heart,” Omega told Jonathan Snowden of Bleacher Report. “I’m not necessarily a fan [of wrestling] anymore. I’m a fan of TV dramas. I’m a fan of video games, and I’m a fan of movies. I like the way that those forms of media are laid out to attract the fan. That’s my study material for how I put together a storyline or a match. Yes, I’m athletic and I can do cool moves and I try to be original with the way I perform them, but I feel the way that I put things together is different from the average wrestler because the average wrestler is just that: He’s just a wrestler. He’s a wrestler who wants to be a wrestler. I am wrestling as a job but trying to tell human stories to pull at your heartstrings.”
Omega prides himself on not having the same match, pointing out Ric Flair and Okada as two wrestlers who have a patterned style that works, but he wants to be different.
“A lot of wrestling historians and purists will go to bat and say that [Ric] Flair was the greatest of all time because he was so successful for a period of years,” Omega said. “The same goes for [Kazuchika] Okada, who’s almost the modern-day Ric Flair. They have a very patterned main event style, but it’s very successful. They bring out the best in almost every opponent. I would watch some of the main event performances, and I would say, ‘Well, this is a great match. Wow.’ You don’t realize until after you’ve seen it 10 times or 12 times, this is actually just a formula they’ve kind of copy-and-pasted. … They see that the reaction is the same every time, so the wrestler says, ‘Oh, OK, this is a formula that works, and regardless of how many times they’ve seen it, it still works.’ I think that’s why the Kenny Omega boom started. There’s no Kenny Omega copy-and-paste formula. It’s all different. It’s difficult and very mentally draining, and because I do that, maybe it makes me not a true wrestler’s wrestler. What I am trying to do is not attract the wrestler’s wrestling fan; I’m trying to open up the world to what wrestling can be and show there is no limitation to what wrestling can be. I went way outside that box. I wasn’t using the age-old wrestler formula where if you do this, it’s gonna get a reaction, so you do this set list of things at this timing and know it’s definitely gonna work. I try to make everything unique, almost anti-wrestling in a way but still existing within the four sides of a wrestling ring.”
Omega turned in another well-received outing on the Feb. 26 AEW Dynamite, defeating PAC in a 30-Minute Iron Man match. He is set to team with Hangman Page, defending the AEW Tag Team Title against The Young Bucks at AEW Revolution.
Fightful will have live coverage of AEW Revolution beginning at 7 p.m. ET.
