Kenny Omega Thought He’d Have to Retire in 2015, Talks Potential Post-Wrestling Career

Kenny Omega recently spoke with Fightful for an interview and discussed thinking he might have to retire due to his neck injury in 2015, plus more. You can see Omega’s interview with Sean Ross Sapp below, along with some highlights courtesy of the site:

On nearly having to retire in 2015: “I remember right before we did the AJ Styles turn. But earlier on in the year before, I had a very terrible herniation in my neck. It was the first time I ever had asked for time off in professional wrestling. I lost all power on the right side of my body and I thought that that was it. I thought that I was going to have to wrap it up and maybe I was already sort of winding down. I was able luckily enough to to turn it around. I think one of the greatest things I can ever ask for is being able to decide what time that is. It’d be great if I could, but unfortunately, as wrestlers, and doing what we do, we sometimes don’t have the ability to choose. In a heartbeat, these things can just fade and or they can be taken away from you. So all I’m trying to do is just kind of dip my fingers and toes as much as I as long as I can. I’m making sure that all these things that that I do take on as responsibilities are things that I enjoy outside of wrestling so that, you know, there’s never a dull moment.”

On his non-wrestling interests laying groundwork for a potential post-wrestling career: “Things that I do in the video game, world anime and, bodybuilding, fitness, all that stuff, these are interests of mine outside of wrestling. So I’m keeping busy. But I just want to make sure that if for some reason something happens in the ring, or outside of it, or whatever, you never know what’s going to happen, that I exit without regrets. Right now. I could not put a number on how long I will be active as a performer. I don’t want to say that I’m going to do it until I just can’t physically do it anymore. It’s a scary thought. Hopefully, I just know when it’s time and until it is time, I’m just going to try to burn the candle on both ends and go out in a blaze of glory rather than just kind of hang around in a ring longer than I should.”