In a recent appearance on The Sessions with Renee Paquette podcast, Kenny Omega, an Executive Vice President in All Elite Wrestling (AEW), expressed that his role as an EVP makes him miss the days when he only had to worry about his in-ring performance.
While the former AEW World Champion acknowledged that their roles and responsibilities are now more limited compared to the first few months in AEW and they have an infrastructure and people to help with their responsibilities, there are still many things they have to do that prevent them from being solely focused on their own performance. He said,
“It (AEW EVP role) makes me miss the days when I could roll up with my carry bag and be like, ‘Alright, let’s just worry about the match that we have tonight’ and the match is over and it’s like, okay, that’s it, it’s over. That’s where the stress starts and ends, with your own performance and now there’s so much more that goes into it and though, you know, our various roles, they do have limits of course. I mean, we don’t do everything. We have more of an infrastructure, and we have people that do have roles and jobs within the company so it’s not like we are as busy as we were in year one. However, there are still things that we have to do all the time and there are still things that prevent us from being the people that we used to be.”
Omega also expressed respect for past wrestlers who had additional responsibilities that were not publicized.
“For the people that came before us and had roles in major wrestling companies but still had to go out on TV and pretend like, yeah, this is the entire reason why I’m here is for this one performance, but they had so many other things on their plate that you didn’t see, that wasn’t for the public to see or even understand or even hear about. These are sort of legends that get told decades later down the line. I have so much more respect for the people that were actively involved on the show but then also were accounted on by the people on their team to provide in some other way that took a lot of time from their schedule.”
When asked whether he feels that his backstage equation with the roster differs as a result of his EVP status. The current AEW World Trios Champion noted that he could never be sure about it, but certainly hoped that was not the case.
“Um, not sure. I’m not sure (if my EVP status has altered my relationship with fellow roster members). It would be sad if people are pretending to be nice to me because of it. I hope that’s not the case. The Bucks and I, we always had an open-door policy. It’s like hey, if we can do something for anybody, our door is always open and just come to us with whatever woe that you may have backstage and the last thing that I would wanna do is kind of create a divide where it’s like, hey, you guys are over here doing your thing. We’re over here because what? We’re more important? I don’t ever wanna feel that way and it’s never been that way. We are just boys in the locker room. We never try to exude any sort of aura about us that hey, we’re a suit in the office. It’s definitely not how we try to present ourselves.”
On the same podcast, Kenny Omega also discussed the backstage fiasco following AEW All Out involving himself, The Young Bucks, CM Punk, Ace Steele, and reportedly several others. Check out what he had to say here.
Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks are set to defend their AEW World Trios Championships against Malakai Black, Buddy Matthews & Brody King at Revolution on Sunday.
