Kenny Omega Credits AJ Styles For Helping Him Decide Not To Quit Pro Wrestling For MMA

Kenny Omega is one of the best pro wrestlers on the earth right now and obviously, WWE wants him. There has to be a greater plan for Kenny Omega at this point after so many classic matches already, but he credits AJ Styles for making that all possible in a way.
While on the Chris Jericho Cruise, Talk Is Jericho recorded an episode where Kenny Omega opened up about how he was planning to quit the pro wrestling business and pursue a career in MMA instead — then he had a match with AJ Style.

“Yeah I mean of course we did multiple tags together and a lot of people don’t know but I have had one singles match with AJ and I actually credit that match to keeping him in the wrestling business. I was sort of at a crossroads (no pun intended) and I wasn’t sure… this was in 2006 I believe and I wasn’t sure if I was sure if I was going to do the MMA thing or I was going to do professional wrestling.”
“I was competing in jiu-jitsu all around the country and I was sort of training in exhibitions and sparring matches to do actual full-contact MMA and it was enjoyable but I found that my in-ring performance was suffering because you know there’s an aesthetic look you have to maintain in professional wrestling. If I’m cutting 20 pounds for a tournament or a fight and then I have to go to the ring I’m going to look like I came out of a dryer and it just didn’t jive. So if I was going to concentrate on one, the other was going to suffer.”
“So I wanted to use that AJ match in Winnipeg to sort of determining what does my future hold for me? Am I going to go into fighting or am I going to do the wrestling thing? And after that AJ match when I thought, ‘Oh my goodness there’s this guy who’s so much better than me but we have this chemistry together.’ It kind of showed me my true potential and maybe something that I could grasp and something I could achieve that I hadn’t seen yet.”
“It really made me look in the mirror and say to myself: ‘Jeez, even when I do these all-time jiu-jitsu tournaments I’m always going for a finish, I’m always trying to have that exciting match when really you should just be concentrating on getting that gold medal or whatever. So I found that I was actually and entertainer, I was a performer. So I was going to give this wrestling thing one more shot. So after my 1 tour which was possibly going to be my retirement tour in America, things really took off after that and then came my first tour with PWG where I met the Young Bucks or at least half the Young Bucks and soon thereafter I was in Japan.”

Thankfully, Omega is continuing in this career as an entertainer instead of a fighter. Only time will tell where he could end up next, but he’ll be one of the best in the locker room no matter where he decides to work.
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