Kenny Omega Explains Why He Feels a Kinship With Hiroshi Tanahashi

– During a special interview with NJPW, former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega spoke about a kinship with his Wrestle Kingdom 13 opponent, Hiroshi Tanahashi. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Kenny Omega on his kinship with Hiroshi Tanahashi: “I feel like there’s some sort of unspoken kinship there, a little bit. Here we are, two guys that were just trying to do the best that we could, and at first, I’m sure the reasons were very selfish. For me, I just wanted to be the best I could be, I wanted to be the best in the world. I wanted to win championship belts. It was never about money. I’m sure if you ask Tana, it would be the same answer. It was probably never about money.”

On what they wanted to convey with their work: “We got to a point where then it not only about championship belts, it became about representing our companies. It became about what is our ideal wrestling style? What does wrestling mean to us? What kind of wrestling message do we want to convey to the world? When you put it all out there, when you’re speaking from the heart, when you’re wrestling from the heart and you’re trying to explain, ‘This is me, this is my message,’ I lost to Tanahashi.”

On why he lost to Hiroshi Tanahshi: “So I didn’t lose because I was the worse wrestler. I didn’t lose because I was weaker, because I was slower. I didn’t lose because I had a worse gameplan. I lost because my dreams weren’t big enough. I was still too selfish.”