Kenny Omega Explains Why He Chose to Sign with AEW Over WWE or New Japan

Kenny Omega is no longer the biggest free agent in professional wrestling.

The former New Japan Pro Wrestling stalwart inked a four year deal to join All Elite Wrestling earlier this week after receiving numerous offers from his former employers as well as WWE.

Omega confirmed that WWE made him a very generous offer to join the promotion and the executives he dealt with were nothing but professional during the negotiations in an attempt to get him to sign with the company.

Ultimately, Omega says what he’s getting with AEW was just too good to pass up at this stage in his career.

“WWE’s offer was of course fantastic as you reported and a lot of people know just common knowledge and they went about it in a very professional, courteous way and those guys are nothing but consummate professionals in how they dealt with me but at the end of the day, AEW presented something that just couldn’t be beat,” Omega said on the Wrestling Observer podcast.

“I’m with my best friends in the business and I have a little bit of control over my own creative, which is always important and I really feel that it’s the true platform for me to let my voice be heard. I always like challenges. I like the prospect of this being a blundering failure.”

Obviously, Omega hopes that AEW is a rousing success but it’s all going to depend on performers like him to help build the company into a place where fans will want to tune in week to week as well as investing to watch the biggest shows.

He says that there was a part of him that wanted to join WWE just based on having creative control taken out of his hands because Omega has spent many sleepless nights obsessing over the direction of his character and upcoming matches while performing in New Japan.

“[WWE] is absolutely not a risk,” Omega explained. “Part of me was like do I want to shut my brain off and have people write for me and tell me what to do? It sounds kind of cool actually.”

Omega also stated that while there were ‘dream’ matches that he definitely could have worked by signing with WWE, the prospect of this particular project was everything he wanted for his career right now.

“I felt I needed to go to a place where I could do more,” Omega explained. “Japan will always be a home to me and I’m always going to be back. AEW for me, or WWE, kind of seemed like the next step, potential dream matches and all that and using the new platform, not necessarily a better one or a bigger one or whatever. I just wanted a new platform to reach new people.”