During a recent Q&A with Pro Wrestling Junkies, Kenny Omega commented on the dichotomy of art vs. the athletic aspects of wrestling, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On his view on wrestling: “I’ll be very forthright on it, and I’ll tell you my honest opinion. To a lot of people, wrestling is wrestling and very barbaric and it should be fighting, and it should just be something very physical and very primal. But I think, much like how boxing has evolved, much like how Mixed Martial Arts has evolved, it’s not just two brutes running at each other swinging their fists. It’s much more than that. Especially when you take a look at the performance aspect of what we do. You have the ability to create whatever you like because it isn’t just a competition, and you’re not just trying to win a medal, or a trophy, or a prize. You’re trying to tell a story, and sometimes, the story’s about you winning, sometimes it’s about you losing. Sometimes, the story is even deeper than that. So, when I really sat back and looked at what we’re really trying accomplish as wrestler, It thought that even though studying stuff that we had done in the past was important and it was important to use that as a tool, I thought that I need to study other performances. I need to study other compositions. So, I would look at and remember — when I was habitually doing matches that were 20-30 minutes in New Japan, I would think shows, dramas on TV, that I would watch that ran between 20-40 minutes per episode. Those are generally the match runtime that I would have. And I would think of what episodes had a great beginning, had a great middle, had a great end. And how did those episodes vary from one another? And of course you are going to have some episodes that stand out as better episodes than others because maybe it introduces a different villain or some other kind of conflict the hero has to overcome, or the main characters have to overcome. And that makes it so you can’t copy and paste everything you do on a template. Everything you do has to be different. It has to cater to certain characters that are involved.”
On getting inspiration from Batman: The Animated Series: “This may sound odd, but when I was a child, wrestlers to me they were superheroes. And that’s why when I was a kid, I either wanted to be a wrestler or a Ninja Turtle because that was something that was larger than life. So, I thought what was universally praised that you watched as a child, that you watched as a teen, I could go back and watch it as an adult and it would still be great? For me, that was Batman: The Animated Series. And I had thought, ‘OK. Everyone will always remember The Joker because he’s The Joker even though he’s the greatest villain that Batman has, but if Batman fought The Joker every week, it would get tired. It would get old. It would get predictable. So that’s why Batman sometime has to fight The Penguin, he has to fight The Riddler, he has to fight Clayface. And for me, some of those stories are even more interesting than clashes he had with The Joker, even though those are the most iconic.”
“So, whether you sub in — whether you have your clashes with The Joker, which will remain pretty serious from start to finish, or you have a Riddler episode which has a little bit of comedic relief in it, or you have something that pulls on your heartstring that has a human side that you feel for, but also has this monster that you can’t tame, I was able to find a lot of commonality, and I was able to find a way to look at that and structure my stories, especially in New Japan — my time in Japan when I was sort of understanding how long I had to be in the ring, how long these matches had to be, and the stories I wanted to tell within a certain period of time. And then when I moved onto AEW, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to accomplish, and I wasn’t sure who I’d be mixing up with, or what stories would emerge, what would evolve, how I would evolve, I would look at my big match performances, matches that I knew I wanted to be special, and I would study, I would play long play lists of classical music. And I would study the composition of how a song would start, when the tempo would become quicker, when there would be a crescendo to everything, and how it would make you feel when you listen to the music, and why so many people around the world believe that classical music is one of the most sort artistic styles of music that you can listen to. And how anyone can find an appreciation to classical music, because you use it in accompaniment to all types of movies still, you can listen to it in an elevator. You can listen to it while you’re shopping, you can listen to it while you’re fighting, you can listen to it while you’re playing video games, while you’re in the shower. It applies to so many situations, and those types of music will — it will never get old, and it’s because when music is beautiful, and art is in its purest form, it’s very flexible. It can be bent like a rubberband in any which way you want it to go. And you’ll be able to fit into whatever mold you want it to be fit in. And I would like in that sense for wrestling to be viewed in the same light.”
On what he wants to achieve with his presentation in wrestling: “And whether it’s always going to be a trial by fire, you can just take a stab in the dark and just shoot for the stars. You’re not always going to hit a home run. Sometimes, you might fail. But I want to at least try to reach more people than what wrestling is currently reaching with what I do. And if what I can do can reach the everyday person who doesn’t necessarily enjoy wrestling or watch wrestling, but they can identify with that as real entertainment or something they laughed at or cried at or got angry at, then I feel like to some degree that I’m doing my job. By no means do I think I’m Beethoven or Michelangelo, but at the very least, I want to take inspirations in those types of artists and use that to inspire my work.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
