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What’s the story?
Current IWGP US Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega was recently a guest on Chris Jericho’s Talk is Jericho podcast and was in conversation with his Wrestle Kingdom 12 opponent. While interacting with each other, Omega and Jericho also revealed how they used the social media in order to build up their WK 12 match.
In case you didn’t know…
During this year’s Wrestle Kingdom 12 event at the Tokyo Dome, WWE veteran Chris Jericho made his much-awaited in-ring return to New Japan Pro Wrestling for the first time in almost over two decades. Jericho who challenged Kenny Omega to an IWGP US Championship match at last year’s NJPW: Power Struggle event finally got his hands on The Cleaner, as Y2J and Omega went toe-to-toe with each other for the very first time.
Having wrestled each other on 4th January 2018, it looks like Jericho and Omega have already put up a Match of the Year candidate as the Alpha vs Omega match has already received a five-star rating from Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.
The heart of the matter
While speaking with Kenny Omega during the latest episode of TIJ, Chris Jericho revealed that he had no idea about what WWE’s initial reactions was going to be when Vince McMahon found out about the fact that Chris Jericho had agreed to wrestle a match for NJPW, who are quite possibly WWE’s biggest competition in the Pro Wrestling world today. Jericho eventually revealed that it was New York City when he along with Kenny Omega and Don Callis came up with the idea to post the first tweet that eventually started the online ‘beef’ between Omega and Jericho.
"What I did was, I had my friend Jeff, who lives in Las Vegas, who is also from Winnipeg. I told him that I wanted him to send a tweet out at 12:01 in the evening about just watching a match between Okada and Kenny Omega and how Kenny Omega is the 'Best in the World.' I was like, 'Best in the World? He's not even the best in Winnipeg.' Then you responded about never meeting your heroes because they're corporate stooges, which then got it up and running."- Chris Jericho stated.
Additionally, Kenny Omega said that this was the perfect way to build anticipation because of how prevalent social media is in today's society. Omega also addressed the fact that wrestlers of today’s generation are more and more active on the social media.
"This is coming up off of when Cody [Rhodes] and the Young Bucks did the fake Invasion angle, and a lot of the WWE guys were responding on Twitter using social media saying dastardly things to one another, so this was commonplace. People take to social media now and are not afraid to tag someone in a derogatory comment or not afraid to mention someone.”- Omega added.
What’s next?
As for Kenny Omega, his next IWGP US Title defence is later this month against ‘Switchblade’ Jay White at NJPW’s New Beginning show. Meanwhile, for Jericho, it is now confirmed that he is all set to miss this year’s Wrestlemania 33 event, however, Y2J has claimed that he will return to NJPW in the near future.
Author’s Take
Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega’s online conflicts suggested towards a match between the two men at Chris Jericho’s Cruise of Jericho event and honestly, I believe no one could’ve ever imagined that the Twitter feud between both men would eventually lead to a match between the two at NJPW’s biggest event, that is, the Wrestle Kingdom show.
