During a recent interview with Alex McCarthy of talkSPORT, Don Callis commented on the Bullet Club reunion that took place on AEW Dynamite, a possible match between Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On the Bullet Club reunion on this week’s edition of AEW Dynamite: “Gallows and Anderson are the IMPACT Tag Team champions and they’re a tremendous team. It seems like people, for some reason, continue to be amazed by what Don Callis and Kenny Omega put together on a week-to-week basis. You thought it was over with Winter is Coming when Kenny and I took the world title from Jon Moxley. Then when we showed up on IMPACT Wrestling and subsequent appearances that we now have an inter-promotional match where Kenny Omega and The Good Brothers face Rich Swann and a legendary tag team in their own right, the Motor City Machine Guns, on an IMPACT pay-per-view. It’s huge.
“Then, in one night, we not only beat Rey Fenix in what a lot of people are saying is an early Match of the Year contender, but we also rolled out the Good Brothers on AEW programming – another good lesson for Tony Khan to always keep his mind open to the opportunities that exist outside his bubble – and then The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega’s best friends, the AEW Tag Team champions. Who thought that group that could be put back together? Well there’s only one person that could do it, that’s me and Kenny Omega. It made Kenny happy to be back with the Bucks, so that makes me happy.”
On Kenny Omega potentially becoming Impact World Champion and dream matches with the company: “You could go through the whole Hard to Kill card and talk about killer matches. It’s a great, great card. But the main event is what everyone is talking about and rightly so. We’ve got Rich Swann who is a great, great world champion standing across the ring from Kenny Omega, another great – the greatest – world champion. That doesn’t happen in the wrestling business. I think many wrestling fans think very small about belts and dream matches. It’s hard for me to comment only because Kenny and I don’t think at that level. It’s not an arrogant thing. Let’s say you have. science experiment and you have an ant farm in your lab.
“You have one of those clear plastic boxes with the dirt in it and the ants live in there. As far as the ants know, they’re outdoors. So you as the scientist look down and you see those ants scurrying around doing what ants do while they’re still totally oblivious to what happens in the human world and they are actually not capable of even contemplating driving a car or taking an airplane or solving a mathematical equation – because they’re ants. They’re very limited in their world view. It’s very much like the wrestling industry for Kenny Omega. There’s a lot of people scurrying around chasing ratings and belts, but Kenny and I are thinking at a level that escapes them. When I say Kenny Omega is a god among insects, that’s what I’m talking about.”
On a potential Kenny Omega vs. Kota Ibushi match: “Kota was a good friend of Kenny’s at one point. We included Kota in the Kenny Omega documentary when we put that together which is something not a lot of people know. I think Kota Ibushi a great wrestler. Kenny Omega is still the best wrestler in the world and number two isn’t close. Whether it’s Rich Swann or Kota Ibushi, you’re getting in the ring with Kenny Omega, a generational, once in a lifetime performer. What makes Kenny great isn’t just the athleticism, it’s his next level thinking. Kota Ibushi thinks in the IWGP bubble. It’s all he knows and all he’s ever known. In order for Kota Ibushi to truly evolve into the Kota Ibushi he can be, he Kota needs to get on an airplane and he needs to come from Japan and defend that title around the world like Kenny Omega does.
“The problem with Kota Ibushi has never been a lack of ability, it’s been a lack of imagination. But Kota is very much like the wrestling fans we spoke about, he has a limited world view. And while he has been a great friend of Kenny’s in the past, the reality is, sometimes as we move through our lives we have to shed friends like we shed dead skin cells. What once worked in a friendship or relationship no longer works for us, so we move on. A lot of people would love to see Kenny and Kota Ibushi reunite, but that’s very small-minded thinking and it is what it is – people get excited about their dream matches.”
