AEW’s women’s division has featured a significant amount of joshi talent, which has resulted in a lot of backlash online, and Kenny Omega recently weighed in on the situation. Since AEW’s inception, stars like Riho and others have been targeted online by trolls, and Omega — who is heavily involved in working with the women’s division — discussed the issue during a recent appearance on the Swerve City Podcast. Here are the highlights:
Fan reactions to joshi wrestlers in AEW: “If I’m gonna speak frankly, a lot of these — so coming from living in Japan for almost 11 years, on the social media — I mean, of course you’re gonna see it everywhere at least to a small degree. To some degree, you’re gonna find trolls. You’re gonna you’re gonna find people who exist solely to try to make someone’s life miserable. But you’ll never see it to the degree that you see it in wrestling, like you will in America.”
The work ethic of AEW’s joshi stars: “A lot of these joshi are coming here, they’re trying to learn a new language. They’re trying to live in a world that is very, very foreign to them. And it’s very difficult for them to acclimate to, to adjust to. They’re trying this American TV style where they’re getting a lot less time than what they’re used to, and they have to hear these cues being screamed at them from the referees and from people in the gorilla position. And they’re still killing it. They’re the most — I would say from year one onwards, they were so reliable. Never had a bad performance, and I really believe showed just a level of professionalism and a level of just dedication of their craft from a technical standpoint.
The hate joshi stars get online: “To hear them ask me like, ‘Why does everyone hate me? Why do they want me to get die, why do they want me to get hurt? Why are they calling me a schoolgirl? And I can say just, ‘Hey, people can be terrible sometimes, and it sucks that you have to listen to that but that’s not everybody.’ Riho for example, went through a tough time when a lot of people thought it was great to, no matter what she posted at any point in time, to go onto her social media and say something super-derogatory. Because to them, or because what someone had taught them, that’s not what a female wrestler should look like.
“And sure, not every female — it goes without saying, not every wrestler looks the same, not every wrestler has the ability to be built the same. Not everyone is gonna look like Big Bertha Faye in the female wrestling world. Can we have people like that? Absolutely, and I want people like that. But just because someone is a complete brick s**thouse doesn’t mean that they haven’t committed their entire lives to doing what we do, and aren’t genuinely, organically over with the crowd.”
Riho inspiring young girls: “Riho, when she would come out? Eruption! And you know, she would get fan mail from all these little girls saying like, ‘Oh my God,’ from their mothers or from the child themselves like, ‘She wants to be just like you, you’ve kind of empowered her. It’s sort of like the — different comparison, but it’s kind of like the Rey Mysterio Jr effect a little bit. Where it’s like, ‘Yeah you know, you’re smaller but you took it to the larger opponent, and you’re an incredible champion.’ He brought a smile to my face, and that really should just trump everything in my opinion.”
People transferring their disdain of Omega onto the joshi stars: “Sometimes it was even residually because of me. Because there are people that hate what I do, and because they know that I had a hand in signing them and introducing the world to maybe their style or a different style. It’s like ‘Oh, you represent what Kenny does and we hate Kenny so I’m gonna come up with a reason to hate you.’”
The perception of joshi talent improving recently: “I think that people have turned around on it a little bit, you know what I mean? Especially just very recently, we’ve had [Hikaru] Shida just kill it with Jamie [Hayter]. We’ve had [Emi] Sakura come back. And I know people were saying like, ‘What’s Sakura doing here, she doesn’t belong here, what a waste of a contract.’ She killed it with Jamie. It’s like, these people know what they’re doing, they’re fantastic. I’m glad that they’re having the opportunity to kind of — even if they don’t quiet the naysayers, I feel that even the naysayers will watching like, ‘Oh, darn… I feel like I still have to parrot what my favorite says [but] I’m at least gonna keep my mouth shut now, because I know that was great.’ So I’m glad to see them kind of eat their own words a little bit.”
You can check out the complete show below:
(h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription)
