New Japan Pro Wrestling star and Bullet Club member Kenny Omega recently spoke about winning this year’s G1 Climax tournament, how different Japanese wrestling is from WWE and why he thinks it’s embarrassing for Kota Ibushi to be booked as a junior/cruiserweight in WWE.
Omega has tremendous respect for WWE Cruiserweight Classic competitor Kota Ibushi. He’s been “chasing” Ibushi for almost a decade now and feels that he finally surpassed him by winning the G1 Climax Tournament. However, he can’t believe Ibushi is content working as a ‘junior’ in WWE and looks forward to wrestling him back in New Japan.
“There are precious few people that can change the face of pro wrestling. It may even just be the two of us. So I’m going to stay here in New Japan, doing my best and waiting for him,” Omega said. “(At the G1 finals) I finally surpassed him. I was chasing Ibushi for eight years and finally outgrew him. I hope that’s inspiration for him, right? It’s not like I could go to WWE and be a junior, there’s no point in that. For him to go do that, be a junior in WWE, isn’t that embarrassing? I can do so much more here.”
He elaborated on the differences between Japanese Wrestling and WWE. There’s no question that WWE has the best production values of any pro wrestling promotion. The pyro and music are the best, but Omega thinks WWE uses slick presentation to mask the fact that their in-ring product is inferior to New Japan.
“For a wrestler there’s obvious pride involved. People are noticing you, for me to have a match of the year, it says that people hold my original style in high esteem. But it isn’t just for me, but Japanese wrestling at large. There are a lot of fans who think WWE is the top of the pile. Obviously their pyro, music, production is the best. But from where I stand, in ring isn’t the best. It’s fun to watch such a high budget production, but they use that to hide a lot of weaknesses.”
Credit to Chris Charlton of Japanese Audio Wrestling for transcribing this interview.