Jungle Boy Has Earned His Shot At Kenny Omega In AEW Dynamite Main Event

This week on AEW Dynamite, Jungle Boy gets an AEW World title shot.

While this is something that AEW detractors might laugh at, he deserves this shot and it should be a fantastic match between one of AEW’s most natural babyfaces and one of its most dastardly heels.

Jack Perry’s Humble Beginnings

For those who don’t know, Jungle boy is Jack Perry, the son of the late Luke Perry of Beverly Hills 90201 and Riverdale fame (and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie).

In 2017, he achieved Internet fame at 20-years-old when a match he competed in showed up on YouTube, one with his dad who was in attendance.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jungle Boy admitted his father was a huge wrestling fan, growing up as a big fan of Dusty Rhodes. He said that it was a big deal for him to end up working with Cody in AEW.

“He was the one who pushed me to get trained and start wrestling in the first place,” Jack said in the interview.

He also mentioned in the interview how amazing it was for him to arrive in AEW, comparing it to working with Quentin Tarantino as a PA for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which Luke Perry appeared in.

“Kenny Omega and Quentin Tarantino, these are people you hear about all the time and their kind of just out there, though, in the universe,” Perry said in the interview. “So then to talk to them and to be there with them, that’s the guy right there, that’s it. It’s a wild experience.”

Now, two years later, Jungle Boy will get to main event a world title match with Kenny Omega.

Jungle Boy Becomes All-Elite

By 2019, five months before his 22nd birthday, AEW signed Jungle Boy to a contract to join the new promotion. He was one of their first signees and introduced to fans on the Being the Elite YouTube series. The sketches involved him riding on the shoulders of Luchasaurus in different locations, and despite saying almost nothing, fans gravitated to the young wrestler.

Jungle Boy debuted at the AEW inaugural event, Double or Nothing, on May 25, 2019, and competed in the Casino Battle Royal. It was a decent debut, but Jungle Boy had a lot to learn about wrestling on a big stage.

AEW let him slowly develop, putting him in the tag team with Luchasaurus and they quickly developed a fan following, getting over as an underdog babyface tag team. When Marco Stunt joined the team, they became a joke for many AEW haters, but the fans seemed to enjoy them. While Luchasaurus was impressive, it was Jungle Boy that seemed to pick up momentum.

That led to Chris Jericho putting over Jungle Boy. The event was the December 4, 2019 episode of AEW Dynamite. Eleven months after signing with AEW, Jungle Boy received a match with AEW World Champion Chris Jericho. It wasn’t for the title, but Jericho claimed Jungle Boy couldn’t last 10 minutes in a match with him, and Jungle Boy went the full 10 minutes, the fans behind him the entire way.

Jericho has done a lot for younger stars, and Jungle Boy got the rub early in his career, which eventually led to his biggest moment as a singles wrestler.

Jungle Boy As The Ultimate Babyface

At Double or Nothing 2020, one year after making his debut in the Casino Battle Royal, Jungle Boy had a singles match, and it was special.

Jungle Boy, who was possibly the best pure babyface in the company (think Ricky Steamboat) took on the man fans considered the most hated heel in MJF. The match went 17 minutes and featured back-and-forth action that ended with MJF winning.

The result was the right decision and didn’t hurt Jungle Boy at all. MJF was the star in the making and Jungle Boy was the absolutely perfect underdog.

I spoke to Tony Khan during the media scrum following Double or Nothing and we talked about the Jungle Boy vs. MJF match. Khan compared the dynamic between the two wrestlers to the classic matches with Ricky Steamboat battling names like Randy Savage and Ric Flair. While both wrestlers were under 25 and had much to learn, this was what Khan saw as the future of AEW, especially concerning the heel-babyface dynamic.

Jungle Boy then proved he could go against a babyface as well, and still keep his underdog status intact. His biggest match since fighting AEW World Champion Chris Jericho came on AEW Dynamite on June 3, 2020, when he faced Cody Rhodes for the TNT Championship. Cody ended up bleeding, but Jungle Boy, even in the loss, proved himself as someone who could match up to anyone, the ultimate underdog.

Jungle Boy vs. Kenny Omega

Jungle Boy has had three great singles matches in his career. He went 10-minutes with AEW World Champion Chris Jericho in 2019. He lost to MJF in May 2020 in a fantastic match. Jungle Boy lost to Cody Rhodes in a TNT Championship match. These were three matches where Jungle Boy didn’t win but impressed everyone who watched him.

Now, Jungle Boy gets the biggest match of his career, his first world title shot, this time against Kenny Omega. Say what you want about Omega, but he can make his challengers look great, even when beating them, which is a trait he shares with Jericho and Cody.

Jungle Boy also deserves this title shot. While he was mostly a tag team wrestler and didn’t win his three biggest matches up to now, he has come into his own in 2021. This year, Jungle Boy is 9-2 in tag team matches, but more importantly, he is 9-1 in singles matches. He won the Casino Battle Royal to earn this shot, but his overall record also makes him deserving.

That makes this match on AEW Dynamite an exciting one for all Jungle Boy fans. No one expects him to win, but fans expect Jack Perry to make them believe he can win.

To learn a little more about Jungle Boy Jack Perry’s journey from his own mouth, check out this amazing short documentary.

Are you a fan of Jungle Boy Jack Perry? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.