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Front Burner Transcript for March 15, 2023

Host: Jayme Poisson

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER 1: What happened to the gentlemen's agreement?

ANNOUNCER 2: Oh, the feet trigger and the last dragon. Suplex, tiger driver 98...

ANNOUNCER 1: Right on his head.

ANNOUNCER 2: Super hero 90.

ANNOUNCER 1: Pulls him in and thrashes him wiith one more knee!

ANNOUNCER 2: (indistinct) the count, it's over! (ding sounds)

JAYME POISSON: Sold out. Stadiums on either side of the Pacific have both cheered and booed for the same Canadian man. This is a guy from Winnipeg, a valedictorian at a high school in the Winnipeg suburb of Trans Conor, who worked at an idea grocery store. But he's also a guy who drags himself between continents, flipping and bloody to become one of the most renowned names in pro wrestling. Kenny Omega.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER 1: Kenny Omega...

ANNOUNCER 2: Omega. The Challenger.

ANNOUNCER 3: Omega heading to the top...

ANNOUNCER 4: Kenny Omega!

JAYME POISSON: Now his moves take their names from video games. He's been everything from the leader of a villainous gang of foreigners in Japan to a rallying point for queer fans to a so-called belt collector who hoards championships in one of the best known industry publications. Kenneth Matches have repeatedly broken the rating scale, netting him the highest reviewed match ever. Some say he's the world's best wrestler. For many, he's at least in the conversation. And tonight at the Canada Life Center in Winnipeg, he's taking the company he's helped build to his hometown for the first time. Kenny is both a wrestler and the executive vice president at all elite wrestling. And these are its second ever Canadian shows. The first here with Kenny. I'm Jayme Poisson, and today I'm talking to the cleaner himself, Kenny Omega. Kenny, it is so great to have you on Front Burner. Thank you very much for being here.

KENNY OMEGA: Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be a guest.

JAYME POISSON: I was actually just watching videos of you wrestling in a Winnipeg bar in the 2000. You must have been like a teenager. And now you're bringing a wrestling company you've helped build to Winnipeg's biggest arena. And tonight, what are you hoping to show the crowd about what you and the sport you love have evolved into over the last 20 years?

KENNY OMEGA: Oh, gee, golly, yeah. I've always been a sportsman. I've always loved sports, but I've loved entertainment, too. You know, I love comic books. I love superheroes. I love my Saturday morning cartoons, movies, all sorts of things. And I really do believe that wrestling can be just a multitude of things. But at its peak, of course, it's entertainment and it can make you laugh, it can make you cry, can make you angry. And I feel very, very blessed to be able to take part in something that can entertain people in so many different ways. And again, I've said this before, Winnipeg is actually a very deep and rich wrestling culture. There's a lot of great stars that are from Winnipeg and a lot of people that are going to go down in the history books as legends in the business. They have wrestled here at some point in time in their careers, so it's cool to bring it back and to have a televised wrestling product live and on a grand scale. It's very cool, like you said, to do something that I was doing, you know, in a small little bar, long, long, long ago. And I can't lie, I would do it. I would do it today if I could. It has nothing to do with the size of the amount of people. I just love doing what I do. It's great just to get in front of people, in this case, in front of my hometown people and do what I do.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. And your family. And right. As you said, Winnipeg has produced lots of great wrestlers. Right? Look, I'm thinking Chris Jericho, too. Right? And why? Why do you think that Canada that Winnipeg specifically has produced all of these wrestlers?

KENNY OMEGA: It's it's funny you ask that. And I've pondered that question myself. It's not exactly the greatest geographical location, especially, you know, when I was coming up through through wrestling, you know, we had sort of had no local television deals. There was really no outlet for anyone in Winnipeg to reach to the next level. Maybe that is part of the answer. If you see someone from Winnipeg that has reached a high level, chances are they had to really jump through a lot of hoops to get there, to get to where they were. I'm not sure, but I always did feel, you know what, I was trying to prove something or weren't. I was trying to reach the next level. It really did feel it's now or never. This is do or die. I have to hit a home run. I have to come back and hit another. And I feel like if you have to have that kind of pressure at all times with the odds stacked against you and you learn to act and perform under that pressure, then nothing really fazes you. So that's why I was saying earlier, even like wrestling in front of a handful people or wrestling in an arena on international television, it makes no difference. It feels the same.

JAYME POISSON: Tell me more about why why wrestling for you? Because I know. I know initially you're planning on being a pro hockey player, right? So why why the that?

KENNY OMEGA: I was very lucky to have some some very athletic genes that the kinds you can buy it at Levi Strauss. But you know Yeah and my first love in sports was hockey. I was I was a I was a goalie, by the way. I really applied myself and I really thought, this is this is what I was going to do. And I was a huge fan outside of that to go to all the Jets games and I'd have all the card collecting and I play video games at times, so I played all the hockey video games. I was just a hockey nut. Yeah, but, but the one love that I always had, I still loved wrestling. Always loved wrestling. I would watch wrestling with my grandfather. I'd watch wrestling with my with my dad. I remember before I would go to my babysitter's at 530 in the morning.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: Everybody wanted to move. Again. We're. The goal with the winner from 40,000 fans who gathered to. Federation of Country One.

KENNY OMEGA: The late night wrestling program for us was too late for me to be awake, so my dad would tape wrestling and I would wake up even earlier. So I guess it would be about like 430 ish to watch wrestling that he had. He had taped for me at night and it was like the most exciting morning the day after, I guess. As I grew older, I became more fond of the entertainment aspect and I loved being able to have a voice. I truly do believe that in a lot of the sports that I have tested myself in, and I'm not trying to not give anyone sports do, but I do feel that as an athlete, I've been tested the most in professional wrestling. Mixed martial arts, of course, is another one. I do believe that mixed martial artists are some of the greatest athletes in all of the planet.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah, maybe. Could you give me some examples of ways that you think you pushed yourself physically in the ring that you're really proud of?

KENNY OMEGA: So wrestling is is a very interesting beast because whether you win or you lose isn't necessarily your decision. It's how you go about doing it. Because of that, you're sort of the master and commander for how hard you want to push yourself. You know, where is your limit? You can set your limit. So wrestling can technically be very easy if you want it to be, but it could also be the most demanding, both physically, mentally sports centric activity that I think you can do. And on top of that, you don't only have to perform at a high level, constantly moving, constantly pushing the pace. You have to be fast enough to be agile, to be coordinated in the.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: Final 45 seconds of this match. Omega is the B trigger. The ripcord reverse.

KENNY OMEGA: You have to keep in mind the safety of yourselves, the safety of your opponents, the safety of the people around you. And then on top of all that, you have to keep in mind you're performing for a crowd, possibly performing in front of people all around the world that need to understand what it is that you're doing. If I'm trying to make people laugh, I can't just tell, you know, I can't tell a Transcona joke. There's going to be areas in the world where people are going to go, I don't get it. Transcona what? What is that?

JAYME POISSON: You mean people in Japan are not going to get a Winnipeg joke?

KENNY OMEGA: Yeah, that's the thing. You have to keep that in mind. It's not only not only do you always be sharp, it's also kind of an athletic sport. So you have to keep in mind how you how you eat, how you sleep, how you look. It's just very taxing, very demanding. And I think I appreciated that part of it. And I think what really tipped the scales in favor of wrestling for me, I was doing competitive jujitsu and there were tournaments you can win on points and you can win on a judge's decision. And it would just eat me up alive if I won on points or if the judges said, you know, we think you're the winner and it would eat me up alive. And people said, Yeah, some other person I think had a more exciting jiu jitsu match on you. I hated it. I wanted people to watch my performance and say, like, you're the most fun or I loved watching you. I think the last time that I performed, I was more concerned with how I looked and how people enjoyed my performance. I didn't, yeah, I was going for gold, but I think I realized that it deep down inside I was trying to be more of an entertainer and a performer than an actual competitive athlete, even though I'm very competitive by nature.

JAYME POISSON: (music break) Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. You know, the reason I brought up Japan earlier is because that's where you you ended up, right? Like, I think a lot of wrestling fans grew up believing the only way to make it was to be a star with World Wrestling Entertainment, the WWE. Right. And I know, I know. In 2005, you got a contract with a league that developed wrestlers for the WWE, but you left, you went to Japan and you built your career there. And what did you find in Japan that you didn't find in the WWE pipeline?

KENNY OMEGA: So as you said, you know, we we were raised as as young individuals, as aspiring wrestlers to believe that there's one end game. There's one place that you want to go. There's one place that you need to go. You are a failure if you don't go there. It was WWF. Yeah, at the time.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: The reigning World Wrestling Federation champion, the Hulkster and the lawyer. Together as a tag team right here on Saturday night's main event.

KENNY OMEGA: I found myself as I had grown into my teen years and thought, Yes, I get it. I still want to wrestle. I still have this thing in me that loves what this is all about, what it can do, what it enables. But I had found myself not enjoying the product, and I had found myself wanting to perform in a different way, in a different way than people were used to seeing it. And that's when I sort of had my eyes opened to the other territories in the world. You know, there there's a huge cultural significance of professional wrestling in Mexico is known as lucha Libre, and it's a completely different style visually. It's it's very flashy. Upwardly mobile. Rey Mysterio And it takes an incredible amount of coordination, an incredible amount of skill. And and people love it out there. The same with Japan. It's again, a very different style. And the emphasis back then and it still is to the day. There's a heavy, heavy emphasis on on martial arts. There's a heavy emphasis on the physical demand of the wrestling portion. But there's still that part where the name of the game is entertainment. And I thought, this is more for me where you're going to collect the best athletes you can who are very gifted and have something unique to show the world, test them physically, put them up against people all around the world and let them entertain the crowd in their own way or the way that they want to. I felt when I was watching tapes, videotapes, this is back in the days of the UN. There was no YouTube, There wasn't even DVDs. I was buying videotapes of of tapes that were, you know, Frankenstein jobs like VCR, to be sure, to be sort of VCR kind of stuff.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah.

KENNY OMEGA: And yeah, I mean, and I was seeing people that I was watching. Inevitably, I've got, you know, guys like Chris Jericho, for example, like, well, they've they've been to Mexico. They've been to Japan.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: The sickening thud is that Bell right in the Skull.

ANNOUNCER 2: Naito split it open Don. (indistinct) Jericho, has lacerated Tetsuya Naito here ....

KENNY OMEGA: And I was ending up kind of liking their stuff there more. And I thought, okay, maybe I will end up in WWF. And if I did, that's cool, but I want to take the same path these guys did. And if I don't make it there, that's fine. But I feel like my heart is to become a journeyman. Because for the people that don't know, I mean, it's not like by comparison, Lucha Libre and Mexico is the equivalent of what a Baja would Winnipeg would be like. It's not like that at all. You know, I've done main events in the Georgia Dome that have over, you know.

JAYME POISSON: 50,000 people, I think. Right, Right.

KENNY OMEGA: I would say I think I think that started with Chris was something around 44 or 45,000 people.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER: Oh, my God.

ANNOUNCER 2: Double foot stomp. Through that goddamn table.

ANNOUNCER: Stomp right through the table.

KENNY OMEGA: And, you know, I've been to Mexico where I've had title matches with I think one of the crowds was 33,000 people. I've done 38,000 people. These are huge crowds, these people. And the production is through the roof. It's it rivals anything you've ever seen. It's just that people, if you don't know, you don't know.

JAYME POISSON: And sorry to interrupt you, but certainly I remember we've talked about this on the show before, some of the criticisms of WWE, the WWF, and how the storylines, you know, some people have said are kind of staid and that they haven't really moved with the times. You know, obviously storytelling, as you've said, is so important to wrestling like a movie or a TV show. The story beats and the endings in wrestling are predetermined, essentially scripted, but also like movies, the way the big action set pieces help tell a moving narrative can be what makes it forgettable or like a complete classic. And so just maybe talk to me a bit about how you tried to elevate the stories Utile beyond reasons for two people to fight, you know?

KENNY OMEGA: Right, right, right, right. So it's probably no secret and maybe it is for people that don't know. But, you know, places like we they have a team of writers and a lot of them have a professional writing background where they've written a certain kind of story at some point in their careers, and they're tasked with kind of finding roles for the stories that they write. It's much like casting for a movie, you know, I think that this person suits this role in my mind. I think this person in suits this role. And a lot of times that could be based on an image. It could be based on how they picture a story looking rather than feeling rather than the way it's told rather than the words. So, again, not a not a slight to the way he does things. I think they do a lot of things incredibly well. And I do think that sometimes when the pieces all fall in place, they can tell some fantastic stories when they find the right roles for the right characters. But sometimes performances come across as hollow or they come across as cheesy or cheap or a variety of things. And I guess I just wanted to be my own master and commander. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to make my stories more relatable. I wanted to tell human stories. So I wanted to make stories where there weren't necessarily there's someone who is 100% ultimately good and there's a 100% ultimate bad guy. Sometimes the good guy has these hardships and sometimes he doesn't do the right thing or sometimes he's conflicted. And I wanted to have much like a television drama. You feel for the good guy when he does something bad and you wish that he didn't do it. Or you want to give a character who's done some bad things, you want to give them a redemption arc.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. And maybe I wonder if one example of what you're talking about here is a story that unfolded over a decade, right, about you and your tag team partner, Kota Ibushi. Yeah. And you called yourselves The Golden Lovers, and you were two men who said you loved each other and you. You embraced and you kissed.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNOUNCER 1: Omega's been obliterated. Look out now. This could break down.

ANNOUNCER 2: Oh. Oh. Look, this is what these fans have been waiting for, literally for years!

JAYME POISSON: And I'll note, I don't think you're ever explicit about your sexuality, but, you know, talk to me a little bit more about how you've tried to deal with these topics better than wrestling has in the past.

KENNY OMEGA: Yeah, I mean, again, there have been great wrestling stories in the past, and I do feel that they were kind of treated as more of a punch line and with not so much class, historically speaking. And I really wanted to tell a story that that focused more on the the hardships that that to people that really care about each other that they can face, especially with the promotion that I had been wrestling for, which was a Japanese wrestling promotion. Now it is a little different. Now we are starting to see the there's they're starting to place women's matches on the cards, but it was predominantly only a male promotion when push came to shove. I had noticed that a lot of times it was about, okay, who's tougher? Who's stronger? It was it was always the same, the same old song. I felt that people maybe wanted to feel something else. I thought it was a chance, especially because, you know, when I was in Japan, there's a lot of creative freedom. I wanted to tell a different kind of story, and I wanted to investigate something that was was very personal to a lot of people, personal to me, even though I was really opening myself to the world. I felt that if I had done it in that fashion, that I could be true to myself and tell something that was very respectful rather than something that would be laughed at. But I wanted to tell a story that whether you you're straight, whether you're gay, whether you were X, Y, or Z didn't matter. You could look at this story and you could appreciate the love between two individuals, the hardships of of being in a competitive business, struggling together, struggling apart. The power that they have when they're are then focused together as a team, how much more you can accomplish. There's so many messages within. And I says again, yes, at its core you could look at it as as a gay wrestling story, which which would be kind of was. But I like to look at it more as as a love story. And I don't want it to be defined necessarily by the fact that it was, you know, two male leads that could have been two females, it could have been a male and a female, it could have been anything. I I'm I'm a I'm an animal lover. I feel like I would love to tell this story, you know, with that as a central focus as well. Yeah, I love that that a person has for his pet or another another animal like these, these things you don't really see in wrestling and you think like, okay, how would that work? Well, at one time, people in wrestling or fans of wrestling would be like, okay, well, how would a gay wrestling storyline work at all? It wouldn't. But there was a time when you would say that you'd be crazy to try it.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. I mean, and for sure, consequence of that would be to open up the sport to a wider audience, to be a more inclusive place in it. You know, I know even in December you went up and pointed to a fan sign that said support trans kids and making wrestling a more inclusive place. Talk to me a little bit about why that's important to you.

KENNY OMEGA: Yeah, I think it's it's always very important. But I always felt that as wrestlers or as a wrestling promotion or someone who was representing a wrestling promotion, I felt that we were never doing enough to reach as many people as we could. When wrestling has such an ability and the freedom to be whatever we want it to be. I don't even feel like I was more imaginative than the next person or anything like that. I just feel like maybe I was just the person in that point of time willing to be the one to put themselves out there to maybe take that criticism and to have the spotlight shine on me a little bit and be like, This is that guy that's doing that thing which wasn't commonplace in professional wrestling, but I didn't. Again, like I said, I felt that if I had done something that was personal to me and something that meant a lot to me as a human being, that I couldn't fail because I wasn't it wasn't manufactured. It was very genuine, is very organic. You know, when when, when, when real feelings come into play, when real people come into play, as long as you're telling the story with conviction, people will come with it and people will believe in it with you if they see that your heart is in it.

JAYME POISSON: I think it was about four years ago. You helped start not just as a wrestler, but as an executive vice president, AEW or all elite wrestling. And this has become a real challenge to the WWE, which of course, as you've talked about, dominated the wrestling market for forever. Right. And so amongst your your different title belts, where does building a company like this rank amongst your accomplishments?

KENNY OMEGA: It's it's right up there and for different reasons. In professional wrestling, there are a lot more people doing it than you'd probably realize. And there are a lot of people with a lot of big dreams that just don't have the platform to show just how talented they are. And I think the most proud thing that I can say AEW has allowed for, for me is being able to show the world some of the men and women who maybe wouldn't have had a voice or wouldn't have had the stage to show what they do best. And now they have that opportunity. Now they have that chance. You know, he has a very structured system. There's a hierarchy. And for for better or for worse, it's heavily produced by a team of people that are in charge of all that creative. But the truth is, and you can see this a lot on any sort of independent scene, whether it be music, acting or all that stuff. Independent artists are sometimes the most creative and sometimes they have incredible ideas that rival people that have been doing it for their entire lives. We have given a voice to some of these people who have that degree of creativity, and I think it has allowed for just, I would say, more variety. And that's why I'll never say that we went into this to compete with WWE. For me, anyway, it wasn't that for me, it was always, I just want to give people the option to see things that are different stories that you might not be able to see there, see people that you might not be able to see there. I feel that, you know, we've we've been fortunate that what we do kind of caught on.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. And do you feel like tonight as you're returning to the city, where were you switched your path from hockey to wrestling and performing in the stadium the Winnipeg Jets play in with the h e w It feels like a full circle moment to you. Like is tonight mission accomplished for you in the ring? Or how else would you still want to change and advance what's possible in wrestling.

KENNY OMEGA: Like you said, coming full circle the place the way where it all started. It feels like a very cool storybook ending. But I've done this now for almost 25 years professionally. And when I thought that I had peaked in 2008, I then peaked again in 2012, I then peaked again in 2015, and then I peaked again in 2018 and suddenly now 2018, I'm in the conversation of being one of the best in the world. I'm on magazine covers worldwide. I never thought for myself ever, ever. And it's like, okay, well, pack it in my done everything and but you need you never have. And I started to to tack off other accomplishments than I ever thought I could do. And then you know, to fast forward again in 2021, I'm back on those same magazine covers and for different reasons. I'm the number one wrestler on the planet again. Of course, some people's opinions. I just had a I had a lot of people at the same point of time, people in the media and what have you. At that one point in time, I was held in a very high regard and very fortunate for it. It's it's allowed for me to challenge myself in other directions, allowed for me to give opportunity to other people, possibly, I don't know, maybe things like that, like my accomplishments and Chris's accomplishments perhaps. You know, that's part of the reasons why we were able to even come to Winnipeg. So it does sort of feel full circle lift, but it also feels like there's another path that leads to some other place.

JAYME POISSON: Well, I feel like...

KENNY OMEGA: I think it's like we keep.. oh, please.

JAYME POISSON: Yeah. No, no, no. I just I feel like this is maybe a bit of an opening for me to pry open a lot of talk about how your contract with me is ending this year, including speculation about whether you'd finally go to conquer the WWE. And does that appeal to you?

KENNY OMEGA: I think at this point anything new appeals to me. And challenges also always, always appealed to me. At one point it was you know, it was one of those if you say, I can't do it, I really want to do it. And now it now it's no, it's not that. You know, I don't know if I would say I'm older and wiser. It's more like I'm older and I care less about that. It's it's more about what kinds of people can I reach. What kind of positive thing can I contribute and what do I even feel best suited for?

JAYME POISSON: Yeah, so. So maybe I guess is the answer.

KENNY OMEGA: Right? I mean, again, it it's it's all it's all place in time. Like, we haven't really even reached that time yet. And, you know, being able to start this real cool thing with with a lot of my my friends and people that I respect in the in the industry. We started this kool aid thing and here we are in Winnipeg, the place I was born, the place where I spent a chunk of time carving my teeth in professional wrestling. And it's like, What? What do I do? What would have happened if I had been satisfied with just staying in Winnipeg? What would have happened if if I had sort of bought the the old song and dance of, Hey, you're nothing until you go to the U.S. or This is what you need to strive to become, or this is where you need to go if you want to be considered anything or to be considered a success or to be taken seriously. I always kind of try to find my own way or at least try to lean in the direction of where my heart is pulling me. And just right now I'm taking things one step at a time. And with this Winnipeg show, it feels like, Yeah, this is cool and this feels right. And what's next? I don't know, because nothing is spoken to me. Nothing is told me This is what you need to do, right?

JAYME POISSON: That intuition, that feeling, right?

KENNY OMEGA: Yeah. Yeah. The spidey sense hasn't hasn't been triggered yet. So again, one day at a time. I want to get this Winnipeg show out of the way. I wanted to be a successful to the point where we can announce we're coming back. Because I think I think it's really important again for us to to embrace our our Winnipeg wrestling culture. You know, we love our hockey, We love our curling let's let's love our wrestling, too. And I mean, we have such talented people that that have come through the city. We have such talented people that live here, that have families here. Let's embrace it. Let's let's let's allow for us to have these large scale shows more often.

JAYME POISSON: Well, wishing you the best of luck tonight with the show. And it has been such a joy to have this conversation with you. So, Kenny, thank you so much for making the time for us.

KENNY OMEGA: Thank you very much.

JAYME POISSON: And Ken, you've been such a great sport, but I wonder if.... Actually, there are some big fans of yours on our on our team and they're wondering if.

KENNY OMEGA: Oh, really? Okay.

JAYME POISSON: There's a possibility that you could sign off today in in the only way that you know how.

KENNY OMEGA: All right. All right. So the fans at home with it's very cool to hear that I have must bid you all to do so until tonight's. I will leave you with a goodbye and goodnight, Bang. Thank you, guys. Hope to see you all at the show. If not, please tune in, DVR it, have someone tape it on the VCR. This is Winnipeg wrestling. This is us back on the grand scale. You guys are getting the spotlight. Winnipeg is getting the spotlight. Very happy times. Thank you very much, everybody.

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Wrestler Kenny Omega's Winnipeg arena homecoming- Transcript

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