Kenny Omega Expresses Dissatisfaction With How American Fans React to International Talents, Notes How Hard Japanese Wrestlers Work

– During his recent appearance on a CEO Gaming Twitch livestream, AEW star and EVP Kenny Omega expressed his dissatisfaction with how international talents and Japanese wrestling talents are hated or insulted when they travel to work in the US. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Kenny Omega on how Japanese wrestling talents are sometimes treated when they come to the US: “A lot of our international talent, they came to this country not really expecting everyone to be as relentless and ruthless, and have a shred of humanity. It’s unfortunate that that’s not the case, it’s not the world that they came into. You know, it catches them off guard and it surprises them to feel so hated so suddenly, and they need to understand that, that doesn’t represent everyone’s feelings, that people literally have nothing else better to do than to go out of their way and create an account to tell them that, ‘this, that, or the other’, something negative anyway, probably not just about wrestling, probably about the way that they look, or the way that they sound, or not being able to speak English — all of that. It’s really sad.”

Omega on how refined the Joshi wrestlers are and how hard they work: “… Cases with [Hikaru] Shida, Maki Itoh, Riho, [Yuka] Sakazaki, when I hear about what some of these pathetic motherf***ers would say because they think somebody else that has a podcast or platform to say something negative, they think that makes it okay … The Joshi wrestlers are so much more refined. They train seven days a f***ing week and are so much more smooth and professional, and we have never once had any sort of backstage political issue with Joshi wrestlers. They do whatever they can, whatever is asked for them.”

Riho became the inaugural AEW Women’s World Champion when she won the title in October 2019. Hikaru Shida became the third champion after beating Nyla Rose in May 2020.