Omega Tells Weekly Pro He Wants a “Fifty-Fifty” NJPW–AEW Relationship and Could Rethink Young Wrestlers if Tsuji Wins

By: Thom Fain

Kenny Omega said he wants the relationship between NJPW and AEW to be “fifty-fifty,” and that a win by IWGP Heavyweight champion Yota Tsuji at Wrestle Kingdom 21 might force him to rethink how he sees younger wrestlers, in a cover interview with Japan’s Weekly Pro-Wrestling magazine.

Asked about the ties between the two companies, Omega said, as an AEW wrestler and as an executive vice president, that he wants the partnership to work. Top-star matches like those on the Dome card matter, he said, and so does contact between each side’s young and mid-card wrestlers. AEW’s wrestlers can learn from NJPW’s touring style, he said, and NJPW’s from working AEW’s television-driven schedule. Only then, he said, does it lead to growth for both companies.

On Tsuji, Omega called the match a kind of test for both men, and a chance to learn. He said he has lately felt himself turning into what Japanese calls a rōgai, an older person who complains about the young and starts sentences with “back in my day,” the type he hated as a young wrestler. He said he wants the match to show whether his view of today’s wrestlers is wrong, and that if Tsuji beats him, he may have to look at them again.

That is a different tone from the Nov. 4 news conference, where he told Tsuji he is “not a world-level wrestler”. Weekly Pro carried the line in its own conference report in the same issue.

The interview is part of a 21-page special on Omega in Weekly Pro Wrestling’s Nov. 25 issue, which puts him on the cover as he prepares to challenge Tsuji at NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 21 on January 4.

The issue, on sale since Nov. 11, bills itself as a full dissection of Omega. It includes an interview and special photo shoot, a move guide, an off-shot collection and a career history. Hiroshi Tanahashi, DDT founder Sanshiro Takagi and Ryusuke Taguchi supply testimony, and a column features Kota Ibushi talking about the Golden Lovers, his tag team with Omega.

Omega called the match more than a contest, and more than a fight with Tsuji’s generation: a fight with himself, he said, with a result that will shape the next chapter of his career. He said the original IWGP Heavyweight belt, which the interviewer noted Tsuji restored in place of the World Heavyweight version, carries meaning in wrestling’s history and culture, and that it is fitting for that belt to be at stake.

Omega said he feels he fights every match carrying Ibushi’s spirit and borrowing his strength, and that the Cross Slash he hit alone in Hiroshima on Nov. 3 came out without planning. Ibushi is out with an injury. Omega said he wants to give him every support he can, as Ibushi did for him, and to face what may be the hardest fight outside the ring together.

Omega has described that bond before.

In a 2022 interview with Monthly Puroresu, he recalled his early days with Ibushi in DDT: “I saw something special in him and he possibly saw something special in me.” He said the two worked out their signature double-team moves, including the Golden Shower and the Cross Slash, in sessions at a dojo in Chiba that Ibushi invited him to.

Q&A with Kenny Omega, his career journey and Japanese culture

Asked what stays constant in him whatever the size of the venue, Omega said he chose a path of sacrifice, missing Christmases at home and not celebrating New Year’s for years, and wants that sacrifice to mean something. Pro wrestling, he said, is the one thing that has never betrayed him.

In our previous interview, Omega said that when he first went to Japan in 2008 he was thinking “this could be the end of my wrestling career,” and that he wanted “to make as much of this as possible.”

DDT founder Sanshiro Takagi, in the special’s testimony, said Omega’s story began with an email from Omega himself, with video of the street-style wrestling he was doing in Canada, and that he doubts today’s Omega would exist if he had not found the video interesting. Takagi said Omega has told him he wants to appear for DDT again, that scheduling blocked a 2017 20th anniversary appearance and the pandemic wiped out plans for 2020 and after, and that with DDT turning 30 next year, the timing looks right.

Omega’s last DDT appearance as the November 2019 Ryogoku show. Omega gave his own account of the DDT years in the interview, saying there was no plan to bring him back after his first trip.

So, he emailed DDT’s Michael Nakazawa to ask, waiting a month between attempts, until Nakazawa told him DDT had an idea. When we asked whether he would go back to Japan, Omega called his shot, saying: “I would love of course, to be back at some point in time. Whether it be for DDT, for NJPW.” He called his Ryogoku Sumo Hall show for DDT “incredible” and the fans’ welcome “a real nice homecoming.”

Tanahashi, who beat Omega for the IWGP Heavyweight title at Wrestle Kingdom 13, said his pre-match line that he hated Omega’s wrestling was half Dome build-up and half genuine. He said his own wrestling is built for people seeing the sport for the first time, and Omega’s for people who already know it. Ibushi, quoted in a column by Tomoyuki Nara, said that, setting aside that Omega is his best friend, an Omega title win could lift Japanese wrestling a level or two and bring lapsed fans back, since the business still feels smaller than before the pandemic.

At the Nov. 4 news conference NJPW held to announce the main event, Omega said, in NJPW’s English translation, “I might not be the champion you want, but I am the one you need.”

“The Cleaner” spoke in Japanese for much of the session. He said he is not coming back as AEW’s representative, that he wants to find out for himself whether he is the strongest, and that it may be now or never.

After beating Tsuji and Boltin Oleg in a three-way match in Hiroshima on Nov. 3, Omega told Tokyo Sports that everyone thinks about retirement and he does too, but that his battered body still has a title run left in it. He sent a message to Ibushi, who is recovering from a serious injury: everyone is waiting for you.

Omega last main-evented the Tokyo Dome in January 2019, when Tanahashi beat him at Wrestle Kingdom 13 for the IWGP Heavyweight title. NJPW calls the January match his first IWGP Heavyweight title bout in eight years. Tsuji, then a Young Lion, watched from ringside as Tanahashi’s attendant.

NJPW has billed the show as a full confrontation between NJPW and AEW. As of Nov. 4, NJPW’s ticket page listed several premium seat categories as sold out.