Kenny Omega reveals his favorite NJPW rivals

As Kenny Omega enters his newest rivalry in AEW, he’s also reflecting on some of his favorite rivalries in Japan. 

Omega was asked about his favorite New Japan rivalries in an appearance on the Battleground Podcast. “I think a lot of people sort of default to the [Kazuchika] Okada one and I understand why,” he said. “But I would say that for fans that were primarily New Japan fans, they also would argue that they really enjoyed my series of matches that I had with [Tetsuya] Naito. They really enjoyed the series of matches I had with [Tomohiro] Ishii.”

Then Omega went into detail about his long-term story with his old partner Kota Ibushi.

“Some of the people know me more because of the Golden Lovers stuff, which is also fantastic,” he said. “And I think that was some of the most proud storytelling that I’ve ever done in my career because the onus was all on us to continue that story forward and to always sort of implant that in the things we had done when maybe the promoters or the bookers didn’t see the value in it.” 

In particular, Omega’s happy how the two of them told the story while wrestling for several different companies.

“We had always sort of wanted to not insult the fans intelligence,” Omega said. “Regardless of what promotion we were in, we wanted to show that there was this interconnectivity and these human emotions, and that life doesn’t end just because of promotion changes. Relationships don’t end because of promotion changes. And it was cool that we could see this multiple-promotion-spanning storyline that took about a decade to see the grand finale and to be able to be at the forefront of an actual real long-term story where the onus was completely on us to tell.”