Kota Ibushi, a former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion, is officially a free agent following his tumultuous departure from New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Given his connections to the promotion (most through Kenny Omega), there’s plenty of speculation already out there that Ibushi will eventually wind up signing with All Elite Wrestling. Ibushi has already addressed that speculation, telling Dark Puroresu Flowsion, “[A] lot of my best friends are in AEW. My younger peers in Japan are also growing up [there?]. Nonetheless, I don’t think of going to AEW immediately. I want to have a ‘school’ in Japan. Once that’s been worked out, I think I’ll talk with AEW.”
Tony Khan then appeared on Busted Open Radio on Wednesday and discussed the company’s potential interest in Ibushi — “There’s a lot of great free agents in the world of pro wrestling but certainly Kota Ibushi is a great talent. When you have a name like that, everybody in the world of pro wrestling would be very fortunate to have in their promotion. I really wanted to work with him in the past so I think that’s something we’d certainly have to consider.” (h/t WrestlingNews.co)
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Omega, one of AEW’s EVPs, has an incredibly close relationship with Ibushi and the two worked their way up the Japanese wrestling scene as the tag team The Golden Lovers. The pair were able to briefly reunite in New Japan before the launching of AEW. Omega then admitted the following year that he didn’t ask Ibushi to join the promotion as he wanted his friend to reach the pinnacle of New Japan first.
“I knew I couldn’t ask [Kota] Ibushi to sign [with AEW],” Omega said back in 2019. “I knew it was his time. I knew that if I asked for him to come [to AEW], that he would. And if I begged for him to come that he would. But I knew that his dream, before anything we ever did, was to win the IWGP Heavyweight Belt.”
Ibushi finally won the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships at Wrestle Kingdom 15 in January 2021, then merged them to form the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in March of that year. He’d drop the title to Will Ospreay a month later.
