"I have to avoid being on my back flat a lot, and try to be on my side, or at least reset to a side position, as quickly as I could, regardless of what happened in the match.”
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After a protracted stint as the AEW World Champion, Kenny Omega was overdue for a break. In a recent interview with Fightful, Omega offers a number of explanations for why “The Cleaner” hasn’t been in a wrestling match since November 2021. “When I’d start to compile a list as to what is hurting — not just hurting, but what it is that isn’t going to heal on its own, the list was just too long, and I knew that as soon as I got into a position where I knew that the company was gonna be okay, and I knew that I wasn’t gonna leave anybody hanging, or devalue a belt or something, that I needed to take that time to finally get things straightened out.”
After fighting in the G1 Climax quarterfinal battle against Kazuchika Okada in 2017, Omega has experienced persistent vertigo. The former Champion described the symptoms he started experiencing when it went down, including vertigo, the sensation that the world is whirling around you.
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“ I had taken one of Okada’s dropkicks … and it was just one of those strange, it happens once every million times, the way that he turns over on the dropkick and the way that I had fell put me right underneath his knee, so he kind of did like this backflipping knee drop onto my temple. And I guess it put something out, it put out my C1 in my neck. I thought it was just more of like a traumatic blow, like blunt force trauma type thing, because it’s a big knee drop on my head. But what I didn’t realize until the day after, in the morning, was that something was out, and something was wrong. As soon as a tried to stand up, I fell over — you know like, you think you’re gonna walk straight, but you just, you’re walking at an angle, and I fell into a dresser and knocked over a bunch of stuff … it was rough.”
During the G1 finals, Omega had to reposition since he knew the vertigo would be worse if he laid flat on his back. “I had just put it in my head, knowing what I was going to do in that match, in the main event, that whatever I do, I have to avoid being on my back flat a lot, and try to be on my side, or at least reset to a side position, as quickly as I could, regardless of what happened in the match.”
