Canadian wrestler Kenny Omega is regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, and is one of the best wrestlers to never make it in the WWE.
He has battled all over the world, from North American to Mexico, and from the UK to Japan. Everywhere he goes, five star matches are sure to follow.
Whether he’s battling it up with Jon Moxley in AEW, trading holds with Andrade El Idolo in Mexico or putting on 7 star classic with Kazuchika Okada, Kenny Omega is always the best wrestler wherever he sets foot.
However, one place you will not have seen Kenny Omega recently is the WWE.
Due to the recent takeover by Triple H (and subsequent reclaiming by Vince McMahon) the rumours of The Cleaner to WWE have never been so concrete.
Many people expect Kenny Omega to make the jump from AEW to WWE at the end of his contract, following in the footsteps of Cody Rhodes.
He has long regarded as one of the best ever to not wrestle in the WWE. However, that is not strictly true, depending on your definition of “wrestling in the WWE” is.
Was Kenny Omega In WWE?
Kenny Omega signed with the WWE in 2005, joining their developmental promotion Deep South Wrestling as a young wrestler.
The Former AEW and IWGP Heavyweight Champion has long been seen as the one man WWE could never get, not realizing that he was signed to the promotion early on in his career.
The Best Bout Machine was signed to a WWE developmental deal in 2005 and was sent to Deep South Wrestling for training.
Back then he was not seen as the supreme talent he was today, but WWE saw something in him and hired him to train under the likes of Jim Cornette and Bill Demott to hopefully mould him into becoming a WWE Superstar.
However, this did not happen. Kenny Omega struggled to fit in the WWE system.
Kenny Omega was not the confident and impossibly smooth worker he is now, and he struggled to fit in with the other wrestlers in the locker room backstage.
Omega’s time in WWE was so awful that he was even contemplating quitting wrestling completely. instead, aiming to become an MMA fighter.
The former AEW Champion particularly struggled with being coached by Bill Demott, the former NXT coach who was fired for bullying and other unsavory practices he subjected his trainees to.
After leaving WWE, Kenny Omega wrestled on the American independent scene before moving to Japan with DDT.
He then went on to join New Japan Pro Wrestling where he became the top gaijan (foreigner) in the company and won one IWGP Heavyweight Championship during a legendary run in the company.
Omega has turned down multiple WWE deals since leaving, including just prior to the announcement of AEW, in 2018.
He was reportedly offered a multi-million dollar deal to sign for the company in late 2018 (along with The Young Bucks and Adam Page), but turned it down to help Tony Khan form AEW, where he became the companies third ever world champion.
Kenny Omega has commented on why he stopped trying to wrestle for WWE, stating that he was not enjoying wrestling for the promotion, instead preferring to be his own boss and sample other wrestling styles.
Speaking on CBC Radio, Kenny Omega said about leaving WWE.
“We were raised 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. Yeah, at the time.
“But I had found myself not enjoying the product, and I had 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 opened to the other territories in the world.”
“I guess I just wanted to be my own master and commander, and what I wanted to do was I wanted to make my stories more relatable. I wanted to tell human stories.”
It seems unlikely that Kenny Omega will ever sign for WWE again, given his past in the company and his recent injury issues.
However, a recent spat with CM Punk earned a suspension with the company. Coupled with his current contract being up early next year, there is a chance that Kenny Omega will sign for WWE in 2023.
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