NJPW's resident daredevil Kenny Omega was the guest on the most recent Edge & Christian Pod of Awesomeness, and spoke about his series of matches with IWGP Champion Kazuchika Okada, beginning back in January at Wrestle Kingdom 11.
“It was our first single’s match. I sort of put all of my faith into this guy. Well, we sort of mixed it up a little when I was a junior in a few six-mans and the finish would be he would hit me with The Rainmaker and that one minute or two minutes we had in the ring before going home, it felt really good. Now that I’m a heavyweight, it’s kind of believable. But for a heavyweight guy wrestling Okada, ‘I think it could be really good. And I’ve seen what Okada can do. I know he knows what I can do. We’ve sort of been in the ring together. Like, this might be something really special and we should just trust in each other.’ So we went into this match with just complete 100% trust, which is why I did a couple of the things that I did and without even worrying about injuries…It’s not just trusting your own ability, but if you trust the people around you, and again, The Bucks, The Young Bucks were there too and I trust my life in their hands as well. I trust my life in these people’s hands, so it was easy for me to commit 100% to everything and just put my best foot forward.”
After the first match was such a huge success, Omega knew the chances that New Japan would want to do a second match, hoping lightning would strike twice, and of course they did--at Dominion in June.
“Yeah, I sort of felt after the first match that there is probably going to be a second one, but I was thinking it was going to be much later in the year or even next year. And when I had returned for the next tour, they sort of said, ‘Hey, the company, our parent company, is putting a lot of pressure on us to sell out the Palace, so we’re going to run with you and Okada in the main event.’ And I thought, ‘We just did it, I’m not even in contention anymore, and the expectations are going to be through the roof! Like, how are we going to do it?'” Somehow, I ended up in the main event at the Palace and we had to do the match with Okada again. Yeah, we did that and then we did Part III at the G1 as well.”
Part III was another barn-burner that was won by Omega this time. But Omega says he hopes if there's a fourth, it's a long ways off.
“I mean I hope there isn’t Part IV this year. I really kind of want to put it to bed for a little bit, but the company likes going back to that match it seems. And that’s not to say I dislike working with him. I love working with him! It’s just I want the story to make sense and I don’t want to run out of ideas. You’d think the fourth one would have to be a be-all-end-all scenario.”
You can listen to the entire podcast at this link.
