How Kenny Omega Is Bringing Back AEW's Biggest Weapon
A just insane run of match quality justified, if it needed to, Omega's affected disposition. He was the new Final Boss in professional wrestling, and his aura dwarfed everything with an exaggerated, villainous laugh. His infamous "You fools!" promo is weaponised, as so much is, in an attempt to mock him. But everything that followed made it a flex, as opposed to a mild humiliation, in retrospect.
He unlocked endless achievements as, in this new stratosphere, a devil's sky, he transitioned to his main event-level Best Bout Machine persona that dripped in a lavish and unparalleled degree of critical acclaim. His seminal series with Kazuchika Okada climaxed with the greatest professional wrestling match of all time. Omega wasn't a shooter - he was almost antithetical to one, with his overtly performative style devoid almost completely of holds - but the genius of that match, or one layer of it, was in the feeling it somehow conspired to evoke. Two years ago last month, the pro wrestling world reacted to a professional wrestling match with the genuine agony and ecstasy of sport. That it wasn't an overt emulation of a "real" fight only underscores how transcendent it was to elicit that feeling. I swear, you'll never see anything like that ever again.
Omega wasn't a WWE guy, but he was the biggest professional wrestling star in the world.
His AEW character is very much removed from the legend he built himself as in the east. This Kenny Omega wants to change the world, by telling complex, emotionally textured love stories with his friends, using an untapped resource of a true ensemble cast to break new narrative ground. At its best, it has worked magnificently.
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