Many are calling the Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay match at the Wrestle Kingdom 17 event earlier this month as one of the best in-ring performances in recent memory.
What did Jim Cornette think?
On the latest episode of his Jim Cornette Experience podcast, the legendary pro wrestling personality sounds off with his elaborate thoughts on the critically-acclaimed Omega-Ospreay bout.
Featured below are some of the highlights.
On not wavering in his stance on Omega: “I am going to say some good things about Kenny Olivier in this little segment here or at least some positive things. My overall opinion has not changed, but I can see at this point, not only can I see where some segment of the people would like what this guy does over there, but also, I believe I may have psychoanalyzed him based on the production that we saw from the Tokyo Dome. You can see on his face when he gets in and he does the poses, the whole thing, this I think is what he thinks he is and has always wanted to be is a character in a cool video game with a cool outfit where he does the finger pointing and the gesturing. He’s playing a part in his mind and the wrestling was the only thing that he could figure out that he could do in the real actual existing world to be a video game character, so that’s why he became a wrestler.
“That’s why he’s had these bizarre views about wrestling, he’s never given a shit about the conventions of wrestling or the origins of wrestling or he wants to expand what we can do with our art because wrestling was his venue to be a video game character. To not be Tyson, whoever he is, but this person he’s created in his mind, Kenny Omega ‘The Cleaner’ in a video game. And I know people are going to say, well, goddam, a lot of guys create gimmicks in wrestling. Yes, at least they were earmarked for wrestling, they created wrestling gimmicks, they didn’t create a gimmick for something else and then figured the only way he could really get a chance to do it and wear all those cool outfits and do that cool shit was to be a wrestler, but that’s why he doesn’t care about wrestling. Can you say that anything he’s ever said that has been reported in public would contradict that thought?”
On the turnbuckle spot in the match: “These guys were laying their shit in. They were beating the shit out of each other. It’s the only time I think I’ve ever seen where two people were not only beating the shit out of each other, for real, but proving that the wrestling business was fake at the same time. So then they got on the top rope, and somehow, they jockeyed up into a position where they were both standing on the top rope and then Kenny DDT’d Ospreay on the exposed top turnbuckle, had almost killed both of them because they fell in a crumpled mess. And then Ospreay rolled out to the floor and the seconds and stooges started distracting the referee and making noise so that Ospreay could get color for a while. And then Kenny got the chance to do the twinkle toes routine, where he does the Canterbury prancing into the ropes on both sides and does a big, graceful dive.
“And at that point, he leaned the table up on the railing and started running Ospreay’s head into the broken table and he was putting his own head through it, he was breaking more of the table, he was committed to this. That’s different, you usually don’t see that, but after all this other shit, I was like, God, will this ever end? But again, you can tell the difference in Kenny there and AEW. His stuff looks better. He works harder, it’s his thing, that’s his fantasy. And AEW is a domestic paycheck. And of course, nobody in this country is going to, well, I can’t say that fuck, there’s 15 of them on AEW, nobody means anything on a main event level in this country is going to let Kenny do all his shit to them that he’s doing to Ospreay so they couldn’t replicate it on AEW Television. But, good, god.”
On the match itself: “It just ruins everything for everybody else, these two fucking self-indulgent assholes going out there and killing every goddamn move and finish ever. But if they’re going to let them, do it, there’s a limited audience for this kind of style and AEW’s got all of them already. It’s amazing, they both beat the shit out of each other, for real and managed to make everything fake at the same time, it’s stunning. They perpetrated most of this stuff, amazingly. By the luck of idiots and fools, they didn’t paralyze themselves. Most of the shit looked good except for some of the wild flips where they just went past each other, you know, pretended. But at some point, you’ve got to say, okay, how can a human being and the human body not be defeated by this, and in that case, are they going to buy the next guy’s finish? Are they going to buy the next angle we try to do or what do we got to do to hurt this guy for him to come back for revenge? You know, literally, goddamn, set him on fire? That’s the problem, like, the Ol’ Roy Shire thing, he told Ray Stevens & Pat Patterson, don’t have a match like that again, it was too good, you guys are going to leave next month, but I got to promote here for the rest of my life. How are you going to follow it? At some point you get there, don’t you?
“Kenny just got finished having everything from his nose to his toes re-positioned or sewed back up, all these injuries and he goes out there and does that? Again, why does New Japan as a company want that? Because where are they going to find any fucking moron that will do this or more in two years? How are they going to follow it? So, anyway, yeah, I see his appeal to a segment of people who don’t give a fuck about wrestling, and, boy, in that New Japan environment and on their big shows with their presentation and whatever the fuck else they do to produce him, he looks like a big star in a video game, so I can see why some people would like that. It didn’t change my opinion of him. And, Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what to say about the match. Like I said, it’s an NBA dunk contest. If you can, if you are just allowed to do whatever you can fucking do with no rules, under the parameter of no game and with the opponents either standing by idly or actively helping you, yeah, you can put a lot of shit together.”
Check out the complete episode of the Jim Cornette Experience by visiting Apple.com. H/T to Joshie Lopez and WrestlingHeadlines.com for transcribing the above quotes.
