10 HUGE Tests Wrestlers Passed
8. Kenny Omega Becomes The Star Of North American Pro Wrestling TV
They said Kenny Omega was too affected and pretentious to get over on American television, that his epic New Japan Pro Wrestling main events were too long and complex to adapt.
"They" were f*cking dumb and wanted him to fail - Kenny Omega's match with the nine year-old Haruka went three minutes and was clearly memorable enough - but questions still lingered in halfway decent faith. Omega wasn't known as an all-timer of a promo. He expressed his story through physicality - and he was entering the land of exposition.
His first televised programme with Jon Moxley was underdeveloped. It was great, but scattered across too many platforms and too much distance to resonate as great. His partnership with Hangman Page was phenomenal in the subtlety of its storytelling and the electricity of the in-ring, but for whatever reason - the sheer depth to it, the way fans had been conditioned to receive tag team wrestling for multiple decades - Omega wasn't received as a top star.
In an ingenious character development, he folded in every cliché of pro wrestling stardom to at once become a star and become a star the Kenny Omega way. He has become a deliberate caricature of an American wrestling star, with his preposterous entrance and tasteless drip, to play with its inherent farce for comic effect - and to map the next redemption arc. He's doing this not because his heart is in it, but because he has been manipulated.
The man who apparently only worked super-long matches has developed quite an incredible knack for blowing people's minds with shock swerves and inter-promotional invasions, too.
Almost like he's a very intelligent wrestler that a generation fell in love with for that reason.