Kenny Omega On Why He Might Not Be Fit To Lead The Bullet Club Anymore
As noted, NJPW Star Kenny Omega was the special guest on Sean Waltman's X-Pac 12360 this week. You can watch the episode in the video above or download the podcast version on iTunes.
Below are some more highlights from the interview:
His 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 s–t 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."
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."
Omega vs Daryl (Hiromu's pet cat):
"It honestly would be the same exact situation as facing the [9 year-old] girl, or Yoshihiko [blow-up doll], where the crowd would believe and cheer for Daryl. There is nothing that 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."
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 and suggest to WWE office and 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 and 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."