Kenny Omega keeps himself in tremendous shape as an athlete to survive some crazy moments inside the squared circle.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Kenny Omega recently sat down with Scott Felstead of Muscle & Fitness to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about all the sports he took part in growing up before he decided to fully focus on professional wrestling, Omega said every sport he took part in, he figured out a way to apply it to professional wrestling.
“I think a lot of the sports that I partook in, the sports that I really tried hard in, whether it be ice hockey, whether it be soccer, basketball, I always took whatever aspect of that sport, that I felt could be most applied to professional wrestling, because in the end, that was always the end game,” Kenny Omega said. “I always wanted to be a professional wrestler, so when it came to being a goal tender in ice hockey, you know, you’re wearing at that time, 30, 40, 50 pounds of equipment.
“But I always made it a goal of mine to keep up with the forwards in any of the conditioning drills, any of the speed drills. I tried as best as I could. And, you know, a lot of times it was impossible, because our skates were different, they were more flat bladed than sharp bladed, we can’t dig in as much, I had of course an incredible deficit of having all that weight on me, but I wanted to push myself. I wanted to be the best conditioned athlete that we had on the team. When I played basketball, I wanted to be very dynamic. I wanted to be explosive.”
In continuing to evolve his wrestling style inside the ring, Omega revealed that growing up and studying someone like Canadian wrestling legend Bret Hart went a long way in turning Omega into the Best Bout Machine we know today.
“Aside from being a professional wrestler, as you know, I’m an athlete,” Kenny Omega said. “It’s very important to me, to represent pro wrestling in the best light possible. I do believe that we are some of the greatest in the world, applying our craft, and even though what we do is a lot of showmanship and there’s a lot of performance to that, I do believe at the base of that, the backbone of that should always be an incredible athlete applying his trade.”
When asked about the scary spot in his steel cage match against Jon Moxley where his V-Trigger broke open the door of the cage and found The Cleaner hanging on to a steel post by his groin, Omega said he was still surprised how he walked away from that spot without getting injured.
“I’m still bewildered over how it was that I walked away from that one,” Kenny Omega admitted. “I just let it happen and I think, somehow, because nothing was going against the grain, or fighting against this odd happening, I miraculously ended up OK.”
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What do you make of Kenny Omega’s comments? Are you surprised he wasn’t injured in that steel cage match against Jon Moxley? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
