My dreams are bigger than money; they're bigger than fame.
Kenny Omega
New Day rocks. I can't lie.
I loved Japanese culture before even realizing it was, in fact, Japanese culture. The cartoons and anime I was watching as a child, my favorite video games, and even in pro wrestling - my favorite wrestlers and matches originated in Japan.
Part of what makes my character work is the delivery of the truth behind my comments.
What true 'Strong Style' really is, is the battle of the heart of man. It's not about how strong and how forceful you're throwing your blows. It's showing the never-say-die attitude of the human spirit. As long as it looks like you're fighting and giving your all, people will believe.
Winning the title is an important detail to the story, but how you get there is much more important.
There are days when you have tag matches, but you need to prepare for your next singles match on that same day.
Why use your natural abilities to make someone feel bad? I just want to be the guy who uses his power to be positive.
I think it's important to show in the 21st century that if you're gay, lesbian, trans, whatever, that you should feel just as welcome to be a wrestling fan as anyone else. You're welcome in the space.
It's easy to make rude comments simply for the sake of being rude, but I'd much rather go a more psychological route.
As an artist, I really feel I need an outlet to exhibit all of my skills.
It's no secret that I love the country, and Japan has always felt like a second home to me.
WWE, of course, has had some fantastic two out of three falls matches.
The best wrestler in the world is me.
Ibushi isn't going anywhere. He's staying with me, and I support his success 100%. But we will continue our success as the Golden Lovers, both as a tag team and as single performers.
All I know is what I have been given and what opportunities lie before me. Try to make the best of them, and I'm not going to give up until I make it to the top.
I'm lucky that my best strength as a wrestler has always been my brain.
I sort of took the literal term of 'The Cleaner,' and I started bringing janitorial items to the ring with me, so I took garbage bags and brooms and mops.
This IWGP title means more with me than any WWE championship.
I am flawed, but at least I can admit it, and at least Kenny Omega, Tyson Smith, is exposed to every single one of you, every single night I perform in the ring. And the relationships that I have in my life with the fans, they're all with me. We are all family.
I guess what Kenny Omega is, even though the image is something that was given to me by New Japan and then tweaked by me, it's just me, Tyson Smith. Yeah, that's me, just a guy that likes to joke around when he doesn't have to be serious. And when he has to be serious, he's really serious!
A lot of people think that comedy is sort of a cop out to not wrestling seriously, but I actually would argue that comedy is much more difficult than wrestling seriously because you have to be creative in almost everything that you do if you want the comedy to make sense within the realms of pro wrestling.
If LGBT people can identify with our story, if they think, 'The Golden Lovers are my team,' I'm good with that.
If you're holding a championship that means something in the landscape of Japanese wrestling, you're guaranteed to get a huge feature in almost every magazine - you might even be guaranteed a front page. That's big.
In WWE, a gay person is usually portrayed like some sort of comedy act to be mocked and laughed at. The world's not like that anymore.
I try to think of things in levels, pain levels and such, injury levels, like, 'How bad is this injury supposed to be? How much should I be selling?' And I think it also helps with the emotional attachment of fans when you're trying to tell a story as well.
I've always been on the outside looking in. I was never popular in school, despite my success in athletics. I would win track and field competitions, but I wouldn't go to parties. I'd be alone.
I'm not one to shy away from speaking my mind.
In high school, despite my involvement on four different sports teams, I threw my duties of being a jock out the window and spent my spare time in wrestling training or on the PS2.
When I was growing up, I thought there was only WWE. That's it. One promotion in the world. And then, as I grew up, I found that there's local wrestling. There's WCW, there's ECW. In Mexico, there are the luchadores. And then, finally, I realized there's wrestling in Japan.
I have things about me that I dislike; I'm not a perfect human being.
If people love you, if you're making money, if the performances you have are unlike anything anyone has ever seen, you get put in a position to be the man.
I take a lot of pride in what I do.
There are times you break up with a loved one, a friend, or whatever. You feel alone. It's a very easy feeling to understand - the feeling of loss, heartache, and pain.
Really, Tanahashi belongs in the WWE. He can be the next Roman Reigns.
Since I'm not in WWE, some people think I'm not even in their league. It's easy for me to tune those people out because they have no idea what they're talking about.
'Virtual Pro Wrestling 2' remains the best wrestling game ever, in my opinion.
Okada and Tanahashi, they don't mind being the wrestler that approaches everything day-of in the ring. I like to go in-depth, to tell the human side of Cody Rhodes, the human side of Kenny Omega. That's why Being The Elite exists.
I don't like to risk - I'm actually not a tough guy at all, make no mistake about it, so I'm not going to do something that I'm scared of. So, if something looks dangerous, at the time I didn't think it was, because I'm the first person to cower away from a risk of injury if there seems to be one.
It's funny: there's this idea where Kenny is only good because he can do what he wants, and he gets time. Well, everyone else through those doors had had time and opportunity. Why didn't they do anything special?
Even my most physical matches in New Japan have all been athletic contests, and generally, they've all been fair and square. It's been this new, strong style we've been trying to create in New Japan, with my own personal style.
We have a very physical performance art. A lot of times, when you want to achieve a certain emotion, you have to use professional wrestling ingredients, which are moves or a sequence of moves.
I actually work better within restrictions. When you leave everything wide open, things tend to get a little convoluted. So when you give me those restrictions and I start to use my brain creatively to work around those, that's when things get interesting.
You're not going to get a seven-star match or six or five in a seven-minute segment, but I always do the best I can to make that segment memorable and entertaining, and I think that's always the name of the game.
If I lose my confidence, then I'll lose my way.
I really want to be an integral part of the New Japan brand in the United States - and other countries, for that matter, too. I feel that I have a certain versatility that other wrestlers do not.
I main-evented a sold-out Budokan Arena show; I participated in the first-ever ladder match in NJPW, made the transition from junior to heavyweight, and earned a G1 win with a series full of performances that I'm personally very proud of.
The Bullet Club has sort of become this pop-culture phenomenon. You don't even have to like wrestling or follow our product, and you can wear a Bullet Club shirt, and it's cool.
The WWE belt means nothing; it means absolutely nothing. They pass around that belt like a hot potato. I probably have a neighbor on my block who held that belt at one point. There is no prestige to that belt whatsoever.
While I'm still healthy, while I still have ideas in this crazy head of mine, I want to contribute, and I want to do things that are going to make wrestling fans happy and are going to make new people into wrestling fans that were wrestling fans before. I want to contribute in that manner.
