At Wrestle Kingdom 17, Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay will finally clash in a singles bout after years of going back and forth in interviews and social media.
Omega and Ospreay clashed in 2022 in a trios match with Omega teaming with The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) to face Ospreay and Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis).
Speaking to NJPW, Omega spoke about comparisons between himself and Ospreay.
"I’m starting to hear all these stories about people that want to do what Kenny did, live the lifestyle that Kenny lived. I first heard that with Mox [Jon Moxley], when AEW first started. He said ‘I want to live a month in Kenny’s shoes, I want to try the G1. I want to see how tough it is’. How did that go for you, pal? He didn’t even make the top four. He certainly didn’t make the finals, and he certainly didn’t win the tournament on his first effort like I did. Will of course, thinking that this was a good approach, he was thinking that maybe he could be the exception to the rule, that he could do it the way Mox could not. That he could do it the way Jay (White) could not. That he could do it the way that I did. Now this year’s G1 was a miss, Okada didn’t go so well either," he said. "So why is it that no-one can do what I can do? Well, there’s so many reasons, but the big one, Will, is up here (taps head). It’s what you don’t got upstairs. I’m not going to credit it to your athletic ability, you’ve got oodles of that. Experience? Yeah, experience plays a factor, but when you have so much ability, you can push past that. What you lack, Will, is your mind. You’re unstable, you’re unintelligent, and that’s why you fail."
Omega continued, explaining what separated him from Ospreay.
"What separates Kenny Omega from anybody? It’s a ‘je ne sais quoi’, I can’t even put it into my own words what it is that makes me so much different to anybody else. I think what it is though is that I’m not ever trying to emulate anybody. I’m not trying to be the next anybody, I’m trying to be the first me. I feel like Will Ospreay has been kinda shoehorned into a, an area, into a position where he feels like he needs to be me. He feels like he needs to make the merchandise sales like I did. He feels like he needs to sell tickets like I did, he feels like he needs to move sponsorships like I did, to break out worldwide, like I did. He could never do it, so he went about it in a different way, and it’s the only way he knew how, by doing death defying stunts on very small scale independent wrestling shows," he said. "On the grand scale, that doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t help you, Will, it doesn’t help New Japan, it doesn’t help the world of professional wrestling. All it helps is your friends in the UK, that run small operations with small crowds and wrestlers that aren’t ready to make the big time. Sure, it’s great for them, I am… look, I’ve wrestled for these guys too, I’m happy for them too. So, in a way I’m, I’m proud of you, Will. Proud of your accomplishments, proud of what you’ve done."
He continued, "We can confuse that a little bit, about you being a nice guy and not forgetting where you came from, but that’s not what it is. That was you, Will, realizing that on the big stage, you lack something that I have- raw star power. A body, chiseled from granite. The ability to talk to people around the world, not just the people in North America, not just to the UK, but to your crowd in Japan. Something you’ve never done, something that you’ll never do, and if it weren’t for Google translate, it would be something that none of you foreigners will ever do, and you don’t feel any shame for that do you? You’ll own that technology and you’ll let somebody else do all that for you every step of the way. What makes us so different Will? I carved my own path through my own hard work. You took the easy way out, and you always leant on other people to bail you out when you couldn’t make a mark."
The IWGP United States Championship will be on the line when Ospreay and Omega clash at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17. Omega was the first-ever IWGP US Champion.
Fans can check out the full lineup for NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17 by clicking here.
