10 Hidden Wrestling Jokes Everybody Missed
9. Kenny Omega Cosplays As His Fiercest Critic
No, not Jim Cornette. Sprite and sh*t-stained sweat pants wouldn't look good on television.
The funniest part of Kenny Omega's character run throughout 2021 - the year in which he evolved into a true master of North American episodic TV - is that so few people actually "got" the deep cuts.
It wasn't an arcane, indulgent piss-take. The blow-off against Hangman Page at Full Gear generated tremendous business, and his broader stuff on TV drew much heat in the run-up to Fight For The Fallen in particular, but the more subtle character details went over people's heads. Brilliantly, it went over the heads of those who deem themselves the smartest and most authoritative in the room.
Don Callis had a great bit - "Bigger than Hackenschmidt, bigger than Gotch, bigger than Thesz!" - designed to both put over Omega as an arrogant blowhard and piss off the most tedious "realism" nerds who considered Omega a disgrace to old school values. In another layer to this in-joke, in the summer, Omega took to sporting a certain facial hair design. Many mistook it for a rib on Triple H's "Reign of Terror" look, but they missed it; Omega himself pointed out on Twitter that it was inspired by Harley Race.
Race is particularly relevant; earlier in Omega's career, Race oversaw a training camp in which he deemed Omega "reckless". The audio retelling of this story is hilarious, incidentally.
That Omega would embody Race was another illustration of how much he had disassociated from his old babyface persona.