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What’s the story?
In a recent interview with WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross on The Ross Report, current IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega opened up on his historic title match against Kazuchika Okada from Dominion 6.9 and also spoke about how he prepared for the match beforehand.
In case you didn’t know…
At NJPW’s Dominion 6.9 event at the Osaka-jo Hall, Kenny Omega and now-former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada competed in one of the greatest Pro Wrestling matches of all time, when two of New Japan’s top stars once again went the distance in a 2 out of 3 falls match.
Prior to their showdown on Saturday; Okada and Omega competed against each other on three different occasions and secured 1-1-1 record. Their showdown from Dominion 6.9 was pretty much the tie-breaker.
After a hard-fought back-and-forth match, it was Kenny Omega who finally stood tall and captured the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for the very first time in his career, after defeating Kazuchika Okada by 2 falls to 1.
Okada’s defeat to Omega also marked the end of his 720-day reign as IWGP Heavyweight Champion.
The heart of the matter
According to Kenny Omega, in order to prepare for his historic title-winning 2 out of 3 falls match against Kazuchika Okada, ‘The Best Bout Machine’ apparently had to undergo a lot of physical changes.
Omega lost a total of 15 pounds in order to make sure he could have a longer match with ‘The Rainmaker’ and for all his hard-work, Omega was indeed finally able to defeat ‘The Rainmaker’ in what turned out to be the first ever 7-star match in the history of Professional Wrestling. (H/T: Wrestling Inc)
"The preparation was, from a physical standpoint, I had sort of kind of done a complete 180. I was putting on size because I thought I was focusing on tags and they suddenly dropped it on me that, 'hey, we're going to go back to the single's for this occasion.' And so, I think I lost something like 14 lbs. or 15 lbs. just to make sure that I could go for what I knew was going to have to be a long point of time. And, yeah, the rest was mental and doing the story and the series justice."
What’s next?
Kenny Omega is currently competing in the on-going G1 Climax 28 and is on an undefeated run in the tournament so far with 5 wins out of 5 matches. Omega’s next match in the G1 28 will be against Zack Sabre Jr., as the two men prepare to go head-to-head against each other for the very first time.
