In an interview with PWInsider.com, AEW President Tony Khan talked about Kenny Omega’s hiatus from AEW:
“We miss Kenny Omega greatly. He’s one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and was a dominant champion in AEW for almost a year. And I personally miss Kenny Omega being around very much. He’s healing from a bunch of injuries, significant injuries. And he wrestled through all of that and had some of the best matches in the history of the company while he was really beat up. And he really cares a lot about wrestling and he worked his ass off to fill up and make his matches great even when he was in a ton of pain and could barely get through it and now it’s time for him to rehabilitate and heal and he’s going to come back stronger, and comeback, I hope as good or even better than ever. I really believe the stuff he did while he was physically limited was so impressive. I think he was absolutely the wrestler of the year for 2021. And I’m very excited for Kenny Omega’s return in 2022. It’ll be a long time coming and we’d be excited to have him back.”
“He was coming in with major injuries and then he worked a really hard schedule here in AEW too. Even though we don’t wrestle every day it’s really for the average wrestler. I think it is the best schedule you could get coming in once a week. He was doing really grueling matches every week. And he put himself out there for the fans and then through the pandemic, he never took any time off, and for a long time, there were like five people in the history of the company that had never missed a show and until late last year he was one of the five. Kenny omega has never missed anything until late last year and it was kind of bizarre when he wasn’t there. And it’s still bizarre when he’s not around. So he’s been so dedicated. And even when he was physically beat up mentally, he was able to put together so many great matches during his title reign and before that, one half of the tag team champions.”
