Kenny Omega feels like he has to stay in his shell.
Since the creation of AEW in 2019, the Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, and Kenny Omega have often spoke about their EVP roles and the various ways that it has affected them. Rhodes, now in WWE, has talked about it the most, previously saying that he wasn't mature enough for the role.
In a new interview with Adi Shankar, Kenny Omega spoke about one of his issues with the role, saying that he doesn't feel like he can use BTE-style humor anymore.
“For me, that was [one of] the most regrettable things about becoming an EVP for AEW. By becoming an EVP for AEW, we were now on the hook for anything that we did, said. If it wasn’t to the network’s liking or if it offended people or fans and they wrote a formal complaint, we could essentially immediately be taken off the air. That responsibility to our fan base and the hundreds of people that we employed at AEW, that’s a bit of responsibility. It really made me miss the days of just having a ragtag group of guys that were just being creative and doing whatever it was that came to our minds that we thought would entertain our fan base and create new fans. It was like myself, the Bucks, Hangman, Cody, all of us were respectful, polite individuals, always trying to do things — we would never go out of our way to maliciously hurt anybody. If ever we did anything in character in that manner, it was to tell a story. As the times changed — I was actually recently watching some old clips back when I was joking around with the Bucks cause they were going through some old footage — we’re just laughing at all these old scenes where we’re just doing the silliest of things. It’s like, we knew we were joking. People loved what we were doing back then and they’re all laughing with us and at us and we love that they were. We’re just like, man, isn’t it kind of sad that we just can’t do it anymore? It’s like, who did we hurt by doing this? Nobody. Who would we hurt if did it again today? Nobody, but it would offend somebody and that somebody would go out of their way to make sure they hurt us. They would feel empowered by that. It’s like, okay, well I’ll just stay in my shell and just do what I am being paid to do then. That part of it was kind of a debbie downer.”
Being The Elite has been on hiatus since October 2023.
Elsewhere in the interview, Omega commented on influencers in wrestling. Check out his full comments on the matter here.
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