Kenny Omega Responds to Critics Who Say He's Underperformed in AEW

When Kenny Omega first signed with All Elite Wrestling, many wrestling fans assumed that "The Best Bout Machine" would pick right up where he left off in New Japan Pro Wrestling and dominate the company's main event scene and world championship picture. But that hasn't been the case. Omega lost against Chris Jericho in the main event of AEW's first pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, in May 2019, then proceeded to lose major matches against PAC and Jon Moxley while slowly sliding his way down the card. He seems to have turned a corner recently, winning the AEW World Tag Team Championships with Hangman Page and recovering from a torn labrum, but some fans are still critical about him not being positioned as one of the best wrestlers in the world.

Omega addressed that criticism in a new interview with Sporting News, saying that from a creative standpoint he's still at his peak.

"I could compare it to when your favorite player perhaps gets traded to another team. When your favorite player gets traded to another team, and he's initially not the top scorer or leading in assists or playing the way that he used to play like he did for the home team, your team, it's easy to criticize them and say that you made a big mistake, and that you'll never be the same guy again and that it's all downhill," Omega said.

"Because I decided to take a different path in my career, because I'm not doing these long, drawn-out 45 (-minute) to one-hour matches in singles competition, it doesn't mean that I'm not the same guy," he continued. "This isn't about tooting my own horn, but it's like, I'm now helping run a company that has live television every Wednesday. I'm part of a very successful tag team with 'Hangman' Adam Page, a guy that I have a lot of chemistry with, and I'm existing within a division of guys that are amongst the top of all the tag teams on all of the planet and showing that it takes more than just having a good long singles match to be called the best in the world."

He continued: "In ways, this is all me in my creative peak. I mean, I'm talking about my storyline with Kota Ibushi. I don't know if you call that 'The Best Bout Machine' Kenny Omega or not. But to me, that's something different. It's these layers of these things that that go into making what I think makes a true best in the world — not just one guy that has the same kind of match over and over and over again. Because I do not have that same match over and over again, does that not make me just as good?"

"My critics will say I have done nothing, and that's okay," he concluded. "They can say it, but the truth is far from it."

Omega will compete in a 30-minute Iron Man match against PAC on this week's AEW Dynamite, mere days before the AEW Revolution pay-per-view on Saturday. Check out the full card for the event below:

• AEW World Championship: Chris Jericho vs. Jon Moxley
• AEW World Tag Team Championships: Kenny Omega & Hangman Page vs. The Young Bucks
• AEW Women's World Championship: Nyla Rose vs. Kris Statlander
• Cody Rhodes vs. MJF
• Dustin Rhodes vs. Jake Hager
• Darby Allin vs. Sammy Guevara