![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/WK17_omega_callis.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Despite my criticism of the ugliest blet in the industry and my oft-criticisms of Kenny Omega, I still thought that the card for NJPW\u2019s Wrestle Kingdom 17 looked completely stacked, and if not for the whole eastern hemisphere timezone thing, I most definitely would have loved to have seen the show live.\u00a0 I\u2019m still interested in watching it after the fact, but only time will tell on if I can even find out how to watch it, much less actually have the available time in order to.<\/span><\/p>\n So like most wrestling on the other side of the world, I\u2019m left with written results and YouTube clips to piece together how things went.\u00a0 For the most part, as stacked as the show was, professional wrestling is still professional wrestling, and for the names and narratives that I was aware of going into the event, few things were really any surprises as far as the results went.<\/span><\/p>\n All jokes aside, Zack Sabre, Jr. winning the ugliest blet in the industry<\/span> NJPW Television Championship seemed like a layup of a prediction, as did Kairi retaining the IWPG Women\u2019s Championship.\u00a0 FTR is clearly wrapping up the blet collector gimmick and were obviously dropping the IWGP Tag Team championships, presumably so that Cash Wheeler can actually heal up from whatever has been hampering him over the last six months.\u00a0 And it was very obvious that Karl Anderson was going to drop the NEVER championship to Tama Tonga, considering he\u2019s a contracted WWE talent, clearly loaned to the event solely to exchange the strap.<\/span><\/p>\n Kazuchika Okada winning the IWGP World Championship was also fairly predictable in my opinion, because NJPW\u2019s formula seems to be, when in doubt, Okada, because he\u2019s basically their Hulk Hogan, and will always draw no matter what, regardless of the fact that I think they could\u2019ve gotten some more mileage out of Jay White being the guy.<\/span><\/p>\n The only real surprises of the night were, when Sasha Banks was going to show up, and the fact that Kenny Omega defeated Will Ospreay for the IWGP US Championship.\u00a0 Obviously, Sasha, now going under Mercedes Mone showed up in the aftermath of Kairi\u2019s match, because why wouldn\u2019t she be immediately thrust into the World title picture?\u00a0 But I\u2019ve got lots of thoughts and words about Sasha<\/span> Mercedes that I\u2019ll get to in a separate post, but the rest of this one is basically going to be about Ospreay and Omega.<\/span><\/p>\n Firstly, I didn\u2019t think there was chance that Omega was going to go over Ospreay, considering the fact that Omega is contractually obligated to another company, regardless of the positive working relationship between AEW and NJPW.\u00a0 For the second time now, the IWGP US championship will be taken back to the United States, where it will get more screen time on another promotion\u2019s television time than its own, and it may as well be rechristened the AEW US championship [which they can maybe exchange for the IWGP All-Atlantic Championship which gets equally no domestic television screen timeWill Ospreay is also one of NJPW\u2019s top guys, but he\u2019s still not necessarily a household name to the global audience, and a rub from Kenny Omega would definitely have helped him out tremendously.\u00a0 Now the loss could very well be a promotion disguised as a demotion, and Ospreay could be positioned for a World title storyline, but considering the post-match press conference, it looks more like a potential character reset is impending, seeing as how he\u2019s now lost the IWGP US and the RevPro championship over the span of the last four months.<\/span><\/p>\n But speaking of the post-match press conference, what happened during it is what spawned this entire post coming to fruition.\u00a0 And as much as I\u2019ve blathered tons of words questioning Kenny Omega the performer, I will have to give credit to him for delivering possibly the greatest verbal dunking on an adversary in the history of the business:<\/span><\/p>\n Don Callis: Will Ospreay, you wanted to be Michael Jordan, you wanted to be the man, you wanted to be the GOAT.<\/span><\/p>\n Kenny Omega (mumbling): you\u2019ll have to settle for being scottie pippen<\/span><\/p>\n DC: Tonight, you\u2019re Scottie Pippen.\u00a0 That\u2019s what you are, right now.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I legitimately had one of those OHHHHHHHHH moments when I heard that line.\u00a0 Followed by raucous laughter, and replaying the quip about 15 times.\u00a0 And then another 15 times with the volume cranked up so that I could actually make out Kenny Omega\u2019s precise words so that I could meme-ify caption the above image to immortalize it and hope it shows up in Google images when people search for \u201cOspreay Omega Wrestle Kingdom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I just don\u2019t think anyone other than me understands just how insulting it is to be called Scottie Pippen.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just being called a metaphor for being a #2 guy.\u00a0 A silver medalist.\u00a0 B+ performer.\u00a0 It\u2019s not entirely accurate to compare it to being called a Robin to Batman or a Luigi to Mario.\u00a0 Those are guys that are content and know their role as being sidekicks, second-in-commands.<\/span><\/p>\n Scottie Pippen is a guy who believed in his heart that he was on the same level as Michael Jordan.\u00a0 He thought he didn\u2019t need MJ to win a championship, and on multiple instances, had his chance, and failed.\u00a0 He\u2019s the living totem of being supremely talented, but not THE man, not QB1, not the first pick in the draft.\u00a0 He\u2019s just Scottie Pippen, the guy that\u2019s not the best, not the GOAT, and the guy that falls short when it really matters the most.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve said a lot of things about how I don\u2019t think Kenny Omega isn\u2019t as complete of a package as he and the rest of the internet might think.\u00a0 I think his in-ring work is amazing, but still has some struggles connecting to American audiences.\u00a0\u00a0 I think his mic work is average at best, and there\u2019s a reason why he is paired with Don Callis, so he can do the heavy lifting in promos for him.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t think his heart will ever truly be with AEW in spite of being one of the foundation blocks of the company.<\/span><\/p>\n But as far as delivering an atom bomb of a strike in a promo goes, short of the instances where people have crossed lines in digging into the personal, real-lives of their opponents, I don\u2019t think anyone has ever dropped such a devastating, legendary dunking-on, than Kenny Omega did to Will Ospreay at Wrestle Kingdom 17.\u00a0 I\u2019m hard pressed to believe anyone ever will surpass it, unless they make a better, harder comparison to Scottie Pippen.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite my criticism of the ugliest blet in the industry and my oft-criticisms of Kenny Omega, I still thought that the card for NJPW\u2019s Wrestle Kingdom 17 looked completely stacked, and if not for the whole eastern hemisphere timezone thing, I most definitely would have loved to have seen the show live.\u00a0 I\u2019m still interested … Continue reading Wrestle Kingdom 17 and the greatest dunk in history<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,151,100,83,52,54],"class_list":["post-49163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-basketball","tag-blets","tag-comparison","tag-observations","tag-owned","tag-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49165,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49163\/revisions\/49165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}