Trivia / Kenny Omega

• Author Appeal: As a massive fan of the Fighting Game Community, Kenny Omega helped get Fyter Fest on the docket due to his previous connections with Alex Jebailey, the organizer of CEO - the fighting game tournament which previously played host to a one-off NJPW show in 2018 when Omega was the IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Goes both ways, as Jebailey patterned CEO after a wrestling event, complete with winners receiving championship belts instead of trophies.
  • Kenny would later use his connections at Capcom (Kenny played the live-action version of Cody Travers in his character reveal trailer as well as hosting quite a few Capcom sanctioned events) to help get a full line of AEW/Street Fighter crossover merchandise made.
• Creative Differences: The reason why "Hangman" Adam Page vs. PAC was cancelled on Double or Nothing is due to reports that either PAC himself or his home promotion Dragon Gate doesn't want him to take losses since winning its top championship, the Open the Dream Gate Championship. While PAC would have won at that show, it would have set him up to lose to Kenny Omega later on, and with Kenny working as a face and PAC as a heel, it would have been extremely difficult to pull off a finish that protected PAC without making Kenny look like an asshole.
  • To a lesser extent, one factor that led to Kenny leaving New Japan in early 2019 was because of differences between the Elite and the regime of then-NJPW president Harold Meij over how to help the company make further progress with Western audiences. Most AEW/NJPW collaborations only began in earnest around the beginning of 2021 following Meij's resignation.
• Demand Overload: The ending of Winter Is Coming, where Don Callis announced that Kenny would celebrate his AEW World Championship win on the next episode of Impact!, managed to crash Impact Wrestling's website for several minutes.
• Inspiration for the Work: Crossing with Affectionate Parody, Kenny watched promotional videos for the disastrous Fyre Festival^note The failed music and luxury festival where concertgoers paid hundreds of dollars to go to an island in The Bahamas, only to find hardly any amenities resembling "luxury" (example: re-purposed disaster relief tents), famous musicians announced for the event either backed out or were never booked prior to the planned dates, and on top of that, flights to and from The Bahamas were either delayed or cancelled, leaving many attendees stranded on the island for hours. and was inspired to make a wrestling-themed campaign called Fyter Fest to promote AEW's co-branded event with Community Effort Orlando (CEO). The Young Bucks insisted that Kenny watch one of the two Fyre Festival documentaries (Fyre and Fyre Fraud) to see how that event had Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Got the chance to actually portray a Street Fighter character, appearing as Cody Travers in his character trailer for Street Fighter V.
  • Hopped on the Undertale bandwagon late by his own admission (three years after its release), but loved it enough that he collaborated with Toby Fox himself to make an Undertale-themed entrance video for his match against Hiroshi Tanahashi. He even commemorated the whole deal by foregoing his usual theme music with GaMetal's cover of "Hopes and Dreams".
  • He is also a noted fan of Final Fantasy VII, especially considering that much of his gimmick contains many references to it - chief of all his finisher's name literally being "One-Winged Angel". Not only did he manage to get several chances to interact with Square Enix on the road to the remake, his return to New Japan at Wrestle Kingdom 17 was capped by him directly cosplaying as Sephiroth and getting One-Winged Angel itself as his entrance theme for the night.
  • Kenny has been a huge fan of the Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza in the West) series, that he was ecstatic that he'd be included in Like a Dragon: Ishin! as a Trooper card. While he never played the original, he saw his dormitory roommate play it, and was excited about the remake giving fans a chance to try out the game.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: By all accounts, Kenny was originally booked to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom 13 before dropping it back to Okada at the Madison Square Garden show in the following months. However, due to Kenny leaving NJPW to help found AEW, they were forced to have Tanahashi win the WK match before almost instantly dropping it to Jay White so they could do the Okada title change at MSG.
  • The match of Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley was meant to happen at All Out 2019. However, Moxley later announced on social media that he would be unable to compete at All Out due to an elbow injury.
  • PAC would later be announced as his last minute replacement after AEW and Dragon Gate settled their creative differences, which kept Pac from competing at Double or Nothing and subsequent events. Omega/Moxley would later be rescheduled at Full Gear 2019 instead.
  • Due to the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, the highly anticipated Blood and Guts match between The Elite and the Inner Circle had to be postponed indefinitely. It was eventually replaced by the Stadium Stampede match at Double or Nothing.
  • Kenny's first two opponents in the World Title Eliminator Tournament both had to be replaced due to circumstances outside of AEW's control. Joey Janela was in contact with someone who tested positive for the Coronavirus so he had to be replaced with Sonny Kiss and Rey Fenix injured his neck in his previous match with Penta El Zero M so Penta replaced him.
  • Kenny and Chris Jericho were scheduled to challenge Ricky Starks and Big Bill for the AEW World Tag Team Championship, however Kenny contracted Diverticulitis forcing him to take an extended hiatus from wrestling and Sammy Guevara took his place.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • Besides instances of wrestlers coming out to licensed music (Prince Devitt, Togi Makabe, etc.), the music used for the VTR leading to Kenny Omega vs. Chris Jericho at Wrestle Kingdom 12 consisted of songs originally composed for Tekken 7.^note Likely as a result of NJPW's prior collaboration with the game in the previous year, in addition to their generally healthy relationship with Bandai Namco.
  • Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks began using Kansas' "Wayward Son" as their entrance theme following their return from suspension at Full Gear 2022.
• Wag the Director:
  • Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks became this via their YouTube channel as The Elite, as its kayfabe content slowly progressed from comedic skits into a major part of a serious build for a feud between Omega and Adam Cole across New Japan and Ring of Honor, meant to culminate in at least one match between the two for ROH during his farewell with the company in Florida.
  • They wound up incorporating legitimate events, such as Nick's food poisoning and Omega's Visa issues keeping him away from the ROH shows, into the storyline as being the handiwork of Cole blatantly playing The Starscream (which was portrayed early on with him trying to "fire" the Bucks after he lost the ROH title to Daniels). Instead of Cole vs. Omega, thanks to the Visa issues, the payoff to the story turned out to be Marty Scurll joining the Bullet Club, replacing Cole, and being the one to beat him on his exit.
  • NJPW made the call to have Scurll join the Club and represent them at the 2017 Best of Super Juniors tournament after seeing the positive fan response to his appearances on the channel, but they wanted him to simply tweet his membership, which the Bucks protested as they considered it a waste of storytelling opportunity.
  • So instead they reworked the plot to have Scurll revealed at the War of the Worlds event where Cole was to be kicked out, plugging him into Kenny's place as Cole's final opponent, even filming Kenny's "Consider yourself fired" screen promo on some pretty short notice.
  • That said, NJPW (or Gedo, more specifically) plan all of the Club's storylines and future members far in advance, so the Elite (as with almost all other New Japan talent) need to earn the company's blessing before moving on with any other ideas.
• What Could Have Been: Following Prince Devitt's departure for NXT, Omega was considered to be the Bullet Club's next leader, but was held off due to AJ Styles' arrival in 2014. For that matter, Styles winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship on the Bullet Club's one-year anniversary is highly hinted to have been the original plan intended for Devitt, which would mean AJ was chosen as soon as he was available specifically as a more certain plug to fill that void due to being so seasoned and renowned as an elite wrestler, whereas Omega was still unproven as a top player at that point. Kenny would join the group a few months after AJ's debut as a junior - being the Club's ace in that division, and it would take a bit over a year before he properly took control of Bullet Club by ousting AJ when he too left for WWE.
  • Had rather grandiose plans for his Destiny 2 and Undertale-themed entrances in his 2018 and 2019 Wrestle Kingdom appearances, but often ran into problems planning for them with management. He did get to pull off an Undertale-themed entrance in AEW, though, complete with a custom entrance video.
  • Based off the rumors above about PAC, it's likely that Kenny Omega was planned to become the inaugural AEW World Champion by beating PAC. With PAC out of the picture, his scheduled opponent, Hangman Page, instead won the Casino Battle Royale, and Page faced Chris Jericho to crown the first champion. Ironically, the PAC vs. Omega match did end up happening anyway at All Out, when Omega was scheduled to face Jon Moxley, only for Moxley to be forced to pull out from the match due to injury and be replaced.
  • Not necessarily pertaining to a match he was in, but a match he had planned: plans were originally made for CEO founder Alex Jebailey and DDT wrestler Michael Nakazawa - both of whom have had an extensive history with Kenny - to have a match at the NJPW-sponsored Worlds Collide event during CEO 2018. However, an injury that Jebailey suffered caused the match to be postponed, only for it to take place at Fyter Fest 2019.
  • After losing the Impact World Championship on the debut episode of AEW Rampage, Kenny was then due to drop the AAA Mega Championship to Andrade El Idolo at TripleMania XXIX the very next day. AEW used their Executive Veto to prevent this title change, as they did not want Kenny to drop two titles in a row.