3. Kenny Omega Wants An End To The Wrestling War
“The wrestling community can sometimes be toxic, and I hate seeing it in sports. I hate seeing it in video games, and music and movies, where you have fans divided so passionately. People feel like they have to choose a side, and they feel that once they choose that side, they have to defend that side with every fiber of their being. This isn’t the NHL. This isn’t the NBA. This isn’t the NFL. We aren’t teams playing in the same league.
We’re all wrestlers, and a lot of us are, regardless of who we represent or who are working for, a lot of us still feel like we’re family. I have friends not only in AEW, but I have friends in New Japan. I have friends in Impact. I have friends in WWE. I know it sounds crazy. I have friends there, and guess what, I want them to succeed. I still keep in touch with them. I don’t want you to wish ill, or wish harm or wish death upon them, as my fans, and I don’t think that the opposite is true either.
It’s like saying a broad statement like, ‘I wish for world peace,’ and it’s like, how do you even attain that? That’s impossible. That’s naïve, but as unrealistic as it is, I’m still taking steps because I don’t think it’s wasted effort, and I think as long as fans, little by little, see that there’s a wrestling world that is a better place with all of our companies and our top talents working together, then maybe slowly but surely and maybe I won’t be around to see it.
Maybe I’ll be long gone, retired, maybe even dead, I don’t know, but maybe there will be a world where, even just for one show a year, we get talents that work together on an incredible super show to show everyone the greatest talents of the world doing what we love to do and showing the beauty and the peak art form that is professional wrestling, which includes all styles, which is also why I did things challenging things like lucha libre.
It’s why I did challenging things like deathmatches. People don’t expect that from me, but I want to show that there is an art form behind it and that there is beauty in it and you can tell a story. And I love to see a world where everyone is accepting to all of those and can find appreciation in all of those.”
-Kenny Omega via the PWI Podcast (H/T WrestlingInc)
2. Paul Heyman Reveals A New Member Of The Bloodline
“I don’t look at only one person as a potential addition to The Bloodline. I think there is a daily assessment as to what The Bloodline needs and what the presentation requires on television. At the moment I think we are addressing the enormous box office attractions that are now coming back seemingly all the time against the Tribal Chief and the fact that The Usos, who are reigning defending SmackDown tag team champions, are being pushed to the limit by the best tag team to come along besides The Usos in the past 20 years, the Street Profits. We’re telling quite a few stories right now. As the year continues and we get into 2022, are there more stories to tell involving other personalities? I’m sure that there are. And just because (Naomi) is not on television with us doesn’t mean they’re not within eyesight of The Bloodline and doesn’t mean they’re not a member of The Bloodline. It just means we’re not presenting them on TV as such.”
-Paul Heyman via New York Post
1. Legend Claims Corey Graves Didn’t Respect Him
“So what happened was, I already had a deal to be the voice of the World Long Drive Tour. I’d already signed it. Well, the one thing I’m not going to do is go back to somebody and say, ‘Well, I’ve already signed this contract, but now I’m backing out.’ That’s something that I’ve never done, and I never would do. It’s bad business if you do because guess what bridge you just burned? That one. That was on Golf Channel, and that was part of the reason why I left ESPN. Okay, so I had five Mondays that I had to miss. Again, they knew all of this. This is not something that I sprung on them one week.
So I could tell after I missed the first one, and whoever filled in, I can’t remember, and then Renee filled in. I actually felt bad for Renee, because I know how hard it is to do that. After the initial, ‘Oh, she’s awesome,’ then came the venom. That’s the one thing I wish wrestling fans just would let go sometimes, Damn, it’s just a TV show. It’s entertainment. It’s two hours and then you go back to your life. It’s not life or death. So when they go on social media and they crush these people, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. For somebody like me who has other avenues I can take it. I’m good,” he said. “So I also believe this; I think at his core, I think Corey is a really good guy. I don’t think he ever wanted a three person booth. When I used to work with King and JR, we would actually work together and they would give me lines to say. You’ve seen some of the great stuff, like when Kane’s fire would hit and I would fall over backwards. We all worked on that. Corey just didn’t want to do that. He just didn’t want me there. You could tell by the things he would say. There was certainly a complete lack of respect for me being a veteran. For me having the time at ESPN. I certainly never walked in and said, ‘I’m taking this over. This is my space.’ I never did that. You could ask anybody. So every single week it just got more and more difficult to work with him and it was clear he wanted Renee because they’re very, very good friends.”
To be honest with you, I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted to be heel Coach. I wanted to bring that character back. Vince, again, this was him trying to take care of me, and this is where sometimes I wish they would just trust us a little bit more. Because of my time at ESPN, he wanted to protect that credibility and he felt like if I went back to talking trash, being a manager of somebody, they wouldn’t have the credibility on Monday Night Raw with me at the desk that I had and I would lose it from ESPN. None of the places that I work with, not even the PGA Tour, and you would think they’d be the most conservative — They don’t care if I do professional wrestling, because that bridge has already been crossed. I was the first one to do it. The reason it was so important is so that others could do both. So you wouldn’t walk into a room and say, ‘I want to do wrestling and boxing or wrestling and basketball,’ and somebody would tell you no. That’s why it was so important at that time for me to stay in both. To stay doing golf, to stay doing sports, while I was also doing Monday Night Raw, it was very, very important, because now you see with the AEW’s coming in, you’ve got to have guys that crossover.”
-Jonathan Coachman via AdFreeShows (H/T Fightful)
