Kenny Omega and Michael Nakazawa were recently guests on AEW’s “Wrestlers On The Road Ordering Room Service” to talk about several professional wrestling topics.
Here are the highlights:
Matt on himself and Kenny initially being against Being The Elite:
Being The Elite came after The Elite, and it was Nick’s idea. Kenny and I thought it was a terrible idea. We had no idea that this was actually going to pay off one day and that we were going to write for a company one day, and book, and stuff like that. The charm about the show is that it’s clearly guys who don’t know what the hell they’re doing and we have a funny, quirky sense of humor, and you know that Nick edits it. Little did we know that the show was really the ticket to everything. We became more than just wrestlers. We became people that people knew personally.
Omega on his issues with NJPW:
Once they knew that I was going, they did whatever they could – they did a complete media blitz – to make it look like I was this terrible person. Once I picked up on that, it actually inspired me to make a video that I made. Yeah, some of my good friends in real life, Toby Fox, the guy who made Undertale, he helped me write the script for this game idea. I funded the whole thing because I knew it wasn’t going to get cleared [by NJPW].
I was like, ‘okay, we’re clear, here it is. I even edited it for you. It’s all done.’ And they’re like, ‘no, we’re not showing it.’ And I was like, ‘you’re not showing it?’ Yeah. I’m like, ‘well, what do you want me to do then?’ And they’re like, ‘well, the President doesn’t like it. Gedo doesn’t like it.’ Okay. So I said, ‘okay, thankfully, I own it, so here you go, Nick.’ We put it up on BTE.
It got a ton of media, press. It went viral right away. And then, New Japan hits me up like, ‘so if we, like, edited the parts we didn’t like, could we use that video because I’m noticing it’s, like, getting a lot of traction. Could you actually give it to New Japan World?’ And I’m like, ‘oh, I’m sorry, I already gave it to Nick.’
Nick on parting with ROH:
It was a rough month because before that we pretty much had gotten kicked out of Ring Of Honor. And, of course, we were leaving, but it felt like we were physically kicked out. We were all depressed.
Also Read: Rumor: Kenny Omega’s Plans For Wrestle Kingdom 14
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions