Front Burner - Wrestler Kenny Omega’s Winnipeg arena homecoming

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

As a kid in the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona, Tyson Smith was obsessed with hockey and the Winnipeg Jets. He dreamed of being a professional goaltender. Decades later, Smith – now known as “Kenny Omega” – has made his way to the Jets’ home arena for a different reason: he’s performing as a professional wrestler. Omega is the headliner for a show with All Elite Wrestling, the wrestling company he helped build into the first direct competitor to the WWE in almost 20 years. Before he stepped into the ring, Omega joined Front Burner host Jayme Poisson to discuss the culture of wrestling in Winnipeg, his path to fame in Japan, his push to expand inclusivity and storytelling in the sport, and swirling rumours about what he’ll do next. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. I'd like you to set a goal to drive key learning for your people in 2025. I want you to connect with Humber CPL to design a custom training solution that accelerates your team's performance and engagement. Humber works with you to hone industry-specific upskilling, enhance your leadership, and drive results. Flexible learning delivery formats are tailored to your unique needs. Adapt, evolve, and excel. To learn more, go to humber.ca slash cpl. This is a CBC podcast. Sold out stadiums on either side of the Pacific have both cheered and booed for the same Canadian man. This is a guy from Winnipeg, a valedictorian at a high school in the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona, who worked at an IGA grocery store. But he's also a guy who dragged himself

between continents, flipping and bloody to become one of the most renowned names in pro wrestling, Kenny Omega. Omega, the challenger. Omega heading to the top. Kenny Omega. His moves take their names from video games. He's been everything from the leader of a villainous gang of foreigners in Japan to a rallying point for queer fans to a so-called belt collector who hoards championships. In one of the best-known industry publications, Kenny's matches have repeatedly broken the rating scale,

netting him the highest-reviewed match ever. Some say he's the world's best wrestler. For many, he's at least in the conversation. And tonight at the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg, he's taking the company he's helped build to his hometown for the first time. Kenny is both a wrestler and executive vice president at All Elite Wrestling, and these are its second ever Canadian shows. The first here with Kenny.

I'm Jamie Poisson. And today I'm talking to the cleaner himself, Kenny Omega. Kenny, it is so great to have you on FrontBurner. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be a guest. I was actually just watching videos of you wrestling in a Winnipeg bar in the 2000s. You must have been like a teenager.

And now you're bringing a wrestling company you've helped build to Winnipeg's biggest arena. And tonight, what are you hoping to show the crowd about what you and the sport you love have evolved into over the last 20 years? Oh, gee golly. Yeah, I've always been a sportsman. I've always loved sports. But I love entertainment, too. I love comic books. I love superheroes.

I love my Saturday morning cartoons, movies, all sorts of things. And I really do believe that wrestling can be just a multitude of things, but at its peak, of course, it's entertainment. And it can make you laugh, it can make you cry, it can make you angry. And I feel very, very blessed to be able to take part in something that can entertain people in so many different ways.

And again, I've said this before, Winnipeg is actually a very deep and rich wrestling culture. There's a lot of great stars that are from Winnipeg and a lot of people that are going to go down in the history books as legends in the business. They have wrestled here at some point in time in their careers. So it's cool to bring it back and to have a televised wrestling product live

and on a grand scale. It's very cool, like you said, to do something that I was doing in a small little bar long, long, long ago. And I can't lie, I would do it today if I could. It has nothing to do with the size or the amount of people. I just love doing what I do. It's great just to get in front of people, in this case, in front of my hometown people and do what I do. It's great just to get in front of people, in this case, in front of my hometown people, and do what I do. Yeah, and your family.

Right. As you said, Winnipeg has produced lots of great wrestlers, right? I'm thinking Chris Jericho, too, right? And why? Why do you think that Canada, but Winnipeg specifically, has produced all of these wrestlers? It's funny you ask that. And I've pondered that question myself.

It's not exactly the greatest geographical location. Especially when I was coming up through wrestling, we had sort of had no localized television deals. There was really no outlet for anyone in Winnipeg to reach the next level. Maybe that is part of the answer. If you see someone from Winnipeg that has reached a high level, chances are they had to really jump through a lot of hoops to get there,

to get to where they were. I'm not sure. But I always did feel, you know, when I was trying to prove something or when I was trying to reach the next level, it really did feel it's now or never. This is do or die. I have to hit a home run. I have to come back and hit another.

And I feel like if you have to have that kind of pressure at all times with the odds stacked against you and you learn to act and perform under that pressure, then nothing really phases you. So that's why I was saying earlier, even like I'm wrestling in front of a handful of people or wrestling in an arena on international television, it makes no difference. It feels the same. Tell me more about why, why wrestling for you, because I know initially you were planning on being a pro hockey player, right?

So why the pivot? I was very lucky to have some very athletic genes. Not the kinds you can buy at Levi Strauss, but yeah. And my first love in sports was hockey. I was a goalie, by the way. I really applied myself and I really thought this is what I was going to do. And I was a huge fan outside of that too. I would go to all the Jets games.

I'd have all the card collecting. I played video games a ton. So I played all the hockey video games. I was just a hockey nut. But the one love that I always had, I still loved wrestling. Always loved wrestling. I would watch wrestling with my grandfather. I'd watch wrestling with my dad.

I remember before I would go to my babysitter's at 5.30 in the morning. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Motown, Motor City, Detroit, Michigan. We're here at the Joe Lewis Arena. Some 20,000 fans have gathered to witness one of the great World Wrestling Federation events. Hello, everyone. The late night wrestling program for us was too late for me to be awake. So my dad would tape wrestling and I would wake up even earlier.

So I guess it would be about like 4.30ish to watch wrestling that he had taped for me at night. And it was like the most exciting morning the day after. I guess as I grew older, I became more fond of the entertainment aspect. And I love being able to have a voice. I truly do believe that in a lot of the sports that I have tested myself, and I'm not trying to not give any one sport its due,

but I do feel that as an athlete, I've been tested the most in professional wrestling. Mixed martial arts, of course, is another one. I do believe that mixed martial artists are some of the greatest athletes in all of the planet. Yeah. Maybe could you give me some examples of ways that you think you pushed yourself physically in the ring that you're really proud of? you pushed yourself physically in the ring that you're really proud of? So wrestling is a very interesting beast because whether you win or you lose isn't necessarily your decision. It's how you go about doing it. Because of that, you're sort of the master and commander for how hard you want to push yourself. Where is your limit? You can set your limit. So wrestling can technically be very easy if you want it to be,

but it could also be the most demanding, both physically, mentally, sports-centric activity that I think you can do. And on top of that, you not only have to perform at a high level, constantly moving, constantly pushing the pace. You have to be fast. You have to be agile. You have to be coordinated.

We are in the final 45 seconds of this match. Omega hits the V-trigger. The ripcord reversed. You have to keep in mind the safety of yourself, the safety of your opponents, the safety of the people around you. And then on top of all that, you have to keep in mind you're performing for a crowd,

possibly performing in front of people all around the world that need to understand what it is that you're doing. If I'm trying to make people laugh, I can't just tell, you know, I can't tell a Transcona joke. There's going to be areas in the world where people are going to go, oh, I don't get it. Transcona, why is that significant? You mean people in Japan are not going to get a Winnipeg joke? Yeah, that's the thing. You have to keep that in mind. And so not only do you always stay sharp,

it's also kind of an aesthetic sport. So you have to keep in mind how you eat, how you sleep, how you look. It's just very taxing, very demanding. And I think I appreciated that part of it. And I think what really tipped the scales in favor of wrestling for me, I was doing competitive jujitsu and there were tournaments.

You can win on points and you can win on a judge's decision. And it would just eat me up alive if I won on points or if the judges said, we think you're the winner. And it would eat me up alive if I won on points. Or if the judges said, we think you're the winner, and it would eat me up alive if people said, yeah, some other person I think had a more exciting jujitsu match than you. I hated it. I wanted people to watch my performance and say,

you are the most fun, or I loved watching you. I think the last time that I performed, I was more concerned with how I looked and how people enjoyed my performance. I didn't, yeah, I was going for gold. But I think I realized that deep down inside, I was trying to be more of an entertainer and a performer than an actual competitive athlete, even though I'm very competitive by nature. Yeah, oh, that's so interesting. You know, the reason I brought up Japan earlier is because that's where you ended up, right? Like, I think a lot of wrestling fans grew up believing the only way to make it was to be a star with World Wrestling Entertainment, the WWE, right? And I know in 2005, you got a contract with a league that developed wrestlers for the WWE, but you left, you went to Japan and you built your career there. And what did

you find in Japan that you didn't find in the WWE pipeline? So as you said, you know, we, we were raised as, as young individuals, as aspiring wrestlers to believe that there's one end game. There's one place that you want to go. There's one place that you need to go. You are a failure. If you don't go there, it was WWF at the time. The reigning world wrestling federation champion, the Hulkster and the lawyer together as a tag team right here on Saturday Night's Main Event. I found myself as I had grown into my team years, I thought, yes, I get it. I still want to wrestle.

I still have this thing in me that loves what this is all about, what it can do, what it enables. But I'd found myself not enjoying the product. it can do, what it enables. But I'd found myself not enjoying the product. And I'd found myself wanting to perform in a different way, in a different way than people were used to seeing it. And that's when I sort of had my eyes open to the other territories in the world.

You know, there's a huge cultural significance of professional wrestling in Mexico. It's known as lucha libre. And it's a complete different style. Visually, it's very flashy. Takes an incredible amount of coordination, an incredible amount of skill, and people love it out there. The same with Japan.

It's, again, a very different style. And the emphasis back then, and still is to the day, there's a heavy emphasis on martial arts. There's a heavy emphasis on the physical demand of the wrestling portion. But there's still that part where the name of the game is entertainment. And I thought, this is more for me, where you're going to collect the best athletes you can who are very gifted and have something unique to show the world, test them physically,

put them up against people all around the world and let them entertain the crowd in their own way or the way that they want to. I felt when I was watching tapes, video tapes, this is back in the day, so there was no YouTube, there wasn't even DVDs. I was buying video tapes of tapes that were Frankenstein jobs, like VCR to VCR to VCR to VCR kind of stuff. And I was seeing people that I was watching in WWF. You know, guys like Chris Jericho, for example.

It's like, wow, they've been to Mexico. They've been to Japan. The sickening thought as that bell rang off the skull. Naito split open, Don. Chris Jericho has lacerated Tetsuya Naito here in Fukuoka. I was ending up kind of liking their stuff there more. And I thought, okay, maybe I will end up in WWF. And if I did, that's cool, but I want

to take the same path these guys did. And if I don't make it there, that's fine. But I feel like my heart is to become a journeyman. Because for the people that don't know, I mean, it's not like by comparison, Lucha Libre in Mexico is the equivalent of what a bar show in Winnipeg would be like.

It's not like that at all. You know, I've done main events in the Tokyo Dome that have over, you know, jeez. 50,000 people, I think, right? Right. I was going to say, I think the show I did with Chris was something around 44,000 or 45,000 people. Oh, my God! Double foot stop! Through the goddamn table! Double stop right through the table! people. And, you know, I've been to Mexico where I've had title matches with, I think one of the

crowds was 33,000 people. I've done 38,000 people. These are huge crowds. These people, and the production is through the roof. It rivals anything you've ever seen. It's just that people, if you don't know, you don't know. And sorry to interrupt you, but certainly I remember we've talked about this on the show before, some of the criticisms of WWE, the WWF, and how the storylines, you know, some people have said are kind of stayed and that they haven't really moved with the times. You know, obviously, storytelling, as you've said, is so important to wrestling. Like a movie or a TV show, the story beats and the endings in wrestling are predetermined, essentially scripted, but also like movies,

the way the big action set pieces help tell a moving narrative can be what makes it forgettable or like a complete classic. And so just maybe talk to me a bit about how you tried to elevate the stories you tell beyond just reasons for two people to fight, you know? Right, right, right, right. So it's probably no secret.

Maybe it is for people that don't know. But, you know, places like WWE, they have a team of writers, and a lot of them have a professional writing background where they've written a certain kind of story at some point in their careers and they are tasked with kind of finding roles for the stories that they write. It's much like casting for a movie.

I think that this person suits this role in my mind. I think this person suits this role. And a lot of times that could be based on an image. It could be based on how they picture a story looking rather than feeling, rather than the way it's told, rather than the words.

Again, not a slight to the way WWE does things. I think they do a lot of things incredibly well. And I do think that sometimes when the pieces all fall in place, they can tell some fantastic stories when they find the right roles for the right characters.

But sometimes performances come across as hollow or they come across as cheesy or cheap or a variety of things. And I guess I just wanted to be my own master and commander. What I wanted to do was I wanted to make my stories more relatable. I wanted to tell human stories. So I wanted to make stories where there weren't necessarily, there's someone who is 100% ultimately good and there's 100% ultimate bad guy.

Sometimes the good guy has these hardships and sometimes he doesn't do the right thing or sometimes he's conflicted. And I wanted to have much like a television drama you feel for the good guy when he does something bad and you you wish that he didn't do it or you you want to give a character who's done some bad things you want to give him a redemption arc yeah and maybe i i wonder if one example of what you're talking about here and is a story that unfolded over a whole decade, right? About you and your tag team partner, Kote Ibushi. And you called yourselves the Golden Lovers.

And you were two men who said you loved each other and you embraced and you kissed. Omega's been obliterated. Look out now. This could break down. Oh! Omega's been obliterated. Look out now. This could break down.

Oh! And this is what these fans have been waiting for literally for years. And I'll note, I don't think you're ever explicit about your sexuality, but talk to me a little bit more about how you've tried to deal with these topics better than wrestling has in the past. Yeah, I mean, again, there have been gay wrestling has in the past yeah i mean again there have been gay wrestling stories in the past and i do feel that they were kind of treated as more of a punch line and and with not so much class historically speaking and i really wanted to tell a story that that focused more on the the hardships that that two people that really care about each other,

that they can face, especially with the promotion that I had been wrestling for, which was a Japanese wrestling promotion. Now it is a little different. Now we are starting to see they're starting to place women's matches on the cards, but it was predominantly only a male promotion. When push came to shove, I had noticed that a lot of times it was about, okay, who's tougher, who's stronger. It was always the same old song.

I'd felt that people maybe wanted to feel something else. I thought it was a chance, especially because when I was in Japan, there's a lot of creative freedom. I wanted to tell a different kind of story. And I wanted to investigate something that was very personal to a lot of people, personal to me. Even though I was really opening myself to the world, I'd felt that if I had done it in that fashion, that I could be true to myself and tell something that was very respectful rather than something that would be laughed at. But I wanted to tell a story that whether you were straight, whether you were gay, whether you were X, Y, or Z, it didn't matter.

You could look at the story and you could appreciate the love between two individuals, the hardships of being in a competitive business, struggling together, struggling apart, the power that they have when they are then focused together as a team, how much more you can accomplish. There are so many messages within. And I say this again, yes, at its core, you could look at it as a gay wrestling story, which it kind of was. But I like to look at it more as a love story. And I don't want it to be defined necessarily by the fact that it was two male leads. It could have been two females. It could have been a male

and a female. It could have been anything. I'm an animal lover. I feel like I would love to tell a story with that as a central focus as well. A love that a person has for his pet or another animal. These things you don't really see in wrestling and you think like, okay, how would that work? Well, at one time, people in wrestling

or fans of wrestling would be like, okay, well, how would a gay wrestling storyline work at all? It wouldn't. But there was a time when you would say that. You'd be crazy to try it. Yeah, and I mean, for sure, a consequence of that would be to open up the sport to a wider audience, to be a more inclusive place. I know even in December you went up and pointed to a fan sign that said,

support trans kids, and making wrestling a more inclusive place. Talk to me a little bit about why that's important to you. Yeah, I think it's always very important. I'd always felt that as wrestlers or as a wrestling promotion or someone who is representing a wrestling promotion, I'd felt that we were never doing enough to reach as many people as we could when wrestling has such an ability and the freedom to be whatever we want it to be. I don't even feel like I was more imaginative than the next person or anything like that. I just feel like maybe I was just the person in that point of time willing to be the one to put themselves out there to maybe take that criticism.

And to have the spotlight shone on me a little bit and be like, this is that guy that's doing that thing, which wasn't commonplace in professional wrestling. But I didn't. Again, like I said, I felt that if I had done something that was personal to me and something that meant a lot to me as a human being, that I couldn't fail because I wasn't manufactured. It was very genuine. It was very organic. When real feelings come into play, when real people come into play, as long as you're telling the story with conviction, people will come with it and people will believe in it with you if they see that your

heart is in it. Happy holidays. I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. I'd like you to set a goal to drive key learning for your people in 2025. I want you to connect with Humber CPL to design a custom training solution that accelerates your team's performance and engagement. Humber works with you

to hone industry-specific upskilling, enhance your leadership, and drive results. Flexible learning delivery formats are tailored to your unique needs. Adapt, evolve, and excel. To learn more, go to humber.ca slash cpl. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. I think it was about four years ago, you helped start not just as a wrestler, but as an executive vice president, AEW, or All Elite Wrestling. And this has become a real challenge to the WWE, which, of course, as we talked about, dominated the wrestling market forever, right? And so amongst your different title belts, where does building a company like this rank amongst your accomplishments?

It's right up there and for different reasons. accomplishments? It's right up there and for different reasons. In professional wrestling, there are a lot more people doing it than you'd probably realize. And there are a lot of people with a lot of big dreams that just don't have the platform to show just how talented they are. And I think the most proud thing that I can say AW has allowed for, for me, is being able to show the world some of the men and women who maybe wouldn't have had a voice or wouldn't have had the stage

to show what they do best and now they have that opportunity. Now they have that chance. You know, WWE has a very structured system. There's a hierarchy and for better or for worse, it's heavily produced by a team of people that are in charge of all the creative. But the truth is, and you can see this a lot

on any sort of independent scene, whether it be, you know, music, acting, all that stuff. Independent artists are sometimes the most creative and sometimes they have incredible ideas that rival people that have been doing it for their entire lives. We have given a voice to some of these people who have that degree of creativity. And I think it has allowed for just, I would say, more variety. And that's why I'll never say that we went into this to compete with WWE. For me, anyway, it wasn't that.

For me, it was always, I just want to give people the option to see things that are different. Stories that you might not be able to see there. See people that you might not be able to see there. I feel that, you know, we've been fortunate that what we do kind of caught on. Yeah, and do you feel like tonight tonight as you're returning to the city where, where you switch your path from hockey to wrestling and, and performing in the stadium, the Winnipeg Jets play in with the AEW,

it feels like a full circle moment to you. Like it's tonight mission accomplished for you in the ring or how else would you still want to change in advance what's possible in wrestling? Like you said, coming full circle, the place to where it all started. It feels like a very cool storybook ending. But I've done this now for almost 25 years professionally. 25 years professionally. And when I thought that I had peaked in 2008,

I then peaked again in 2012. I then peaked again in 2015. And then I peaked again in 2018. And suddenly, now in 2018, I'm in the conversation of being one of the best in the world. I'm on magazine covers worldwide. I never saw that for myself, ever, ever. And it's like, okay, well, pack it in. I've done everything.

But you never have. And I started to tack off other accomplishments that I never thought I could do. And then, you know, to fast forward again in 2021, I'm back on those same magazine covers. And for different reasons, I'm the on those same magazine covers. And for different reasons, I'm the number one wrestler on the planet again. Of course, to some people's opinions.

I had a lot of people at the same point of time, people in the media and what have you. At that one point in time, I was held in a very high regard. And I'm very fortunate for it. It's allowed for me to challenge myself and in other directions, a lot for me to give opportunity to other people, possibly,

I don't know, maybe things like that, like my accomplishments and Chris's accomplishments, perhaps, you know, that's part of the reason why we were able to even come to Winnipeg. So it, it does sort of feel full circle-ish but it also feels like there's

another path that leads to some other place well i think as long as we keep oh yeah no no no i just i feel like this is maybe a bit of an opening for me to pry um there's been a lot of talk about how your contract with aw is ending this, including speculation about whether you'd finally go to conquer the WWE. And does that appeal to you? I think at this point, anything new appeals to me. And challenges also always, always appeal to me. At one point, it was one of those, if you say I can't do it, I really want to do it. And now it's not that.

I don't know if I would say I'm older and wiser. It's more like I'm older and I care less about that. It's more about what kinds of people can I reach? What kind of positive thing can I contribute? And what do I even feel best suited for? Yeah, so maybe, I guess, is the answer. Right. I mean, again, it's all

place and time. We haven't really even reached that time yet. And being able to start this real cool thing with a lot of my friends and people that I respect in the industry. We started this cool AEW thing and here we are in Winnipeg,

the place I was born, the place where I spent a chunk of time carving my teeth in professional wrestling. And it's like, what do I do? What would have happened if I had been satisfied with just staying in Winnipeg? What would have happened if I had sort of bought the old song and dance of,

hey, you're nothing until you go to WWE, or this is what you need to strive to become, or this is where you need to go if you want to be considered anything, or to be considered a success or to be taken seriously i always kind of try to find my own way or at least try to lean in the direction of where my heart is pulling me and um just right now i'm taking things one step at a time and with this winnipeg show it feels like yeah this is cool and this feels right And with this Winnipeg show, it feels like, yeah, this is cool and this feels right.

And what's next? I don't know because nothing has spoken to me. Nothing has told me this is what you need to do. Right, that intuition, that feeling. Right, yeah. The spidey sense hasn't been triggered yet. So again, one day at a time, I want to get this Winnipeg show out of the way. I want it to be successful to the point where we can announce we're coming back. Because I think it's really important, again,

for us to embrace our Winnipeg wrestling culture. We love our hockey. We love our curling. Let's love our wrestling too. I mean, we have such talented people that have come through the city. We have such talented people that live here, that have families here. Let's embrace it.

Let's allow for us to have these large-scale shows more often. Well, wishing you the best of luck tonight with the show. And it has been such a joy to have this conversation with you. So, Kenny, thank you so much for making the time for us. Thank you very much. And, Kenny, you've been such a great sport. But I wonder if, actually, there are some big fans of yours on our team. And they're wondering if there's a possibility that you could sign off today in the only way that you know how. All right.

All right. So the fans at home, which it's very cool to hear that I have, must bid you all adieu. So until tonight, I will leave you with a goodbye and good night. Bang. Thank you, guys. Hope to see you all at the show. If not, please tune in. DVR it.

Have someone tape it on the VCR. This is Winnipeg Wrestling. This is us back on the grand scale. You guys are getting the spotlight. Winnipeg is getting the spotlight. Very happy times. Thank you very much, everybody.