Kenny Omega is a box office draw and he has the merch sales to prove it. But one thing fans might not know is Kenny wasn’t always The Cleaner fans know today.
There was once a time when he was still figuring it out and Omegaman recently spoke to Edge and Christian on their Pod Of Awesomeness about some of the early ideas New Japan Pro Wrestling had for him.
“So, before I made my debut as Kenny ‘The Cleaner’ Omega, they still wanted to lay down some guidelines and rules as to exactly that was. And originally I was supposed to be kinda like The Ringmaster — Steve Austin ‘The Ringmaster.’ Cold calculating, I always have a mouth piece — New Japan fans were kinda their own fans. There were, of course, some crossover but a lot of the New Japan fans only knew their product. So they thought it was cool to pretend that I just never knew Japanese anymore or at least chose not to speak it.”
We all love Kenny Omega as The Cleaner he is today. But just imagine how different things would have been if NJPW would have stuck to their original plan and kept Omega as an homage to Steve Austin’s initial WWE persona? We also have to wonder if an IWGP Million Dollar Belt was in New Japan’s plans as well.
There’s a ton of hot news that you may have missed. Catch up by clicking on the links below:
- WATCH: Asuka vacates her title and says goodbye to NXT
- What’s next for Kevin Owens and AJ Styles on WWE SmackDown Live?
- Why Rusev lost to Randy Orton so quickly at SummerSlam
- Possible future plans for Bobby Roode in WWE
- What are the plans for Dolph Ziggler at this point?
- Possible huge plans for The New Day on the way?
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness with a H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
