Kenny Omega on Best Choice He Could Make Was Having Will Ospreay Be The Next Guy, Doubts & Concerns He Had Going Into AEW All In 2026, & His Mentality For His Big Matches

A recent episode of The Anime Effect Podcast featured Kenny Omega as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Omega’s thoughts about his tweet after his AEW World Championship match against Will Ospreay at AEW All In 2026 that read “The rest is up to you, Will” and the coversation he had with Ospreay after the match.

“So I do feel that there’s certain phrases and meanings to words that you can say, even if it’s pulled directly from a movie, from an anime; it has meaning. It has profound meaning, and when I had told Will (Ospreay), like, ‘Hey, it’s all up to you now,’ there’s more to that. We had a bit of a conversation, and I actually said to him, ‘It’s up to you now,’ and I added the part of, ‘I don’t know if I can do it anymore,’ and it’s not that I can’t do it. It’s can I just not do it at the volume that the fans expect me to do it? Like All Might, gonna tie it back to that, the amount of times he can use his powers becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and I always feel the expectation of the people and they deserve to have the best show in town. They really do. If we have a champion, you know, that can beat me, if we have someone that the fans have adulation for, have an admiration for, cheer for him or her, that’s something special and that’s something that needs to be protected, I believe. Because it’s so hard to find new stars, and when you do, you have to make sure that you’re gonna give them an environment where they can thrive, and so my goal, and knowing how hungry Ospreay was after coming back from a very scary surgery — you can tell how hungry he is. He has his house still in the U.K. but he still wants to be on every single show, and even if he had a match, the next day — the biggest match of his career at Wembley — he was still grinding it out on a local indie the day before… I can’t do that schedule anymore. I just can’t do it, and I do feel that if there is a champion and someone who can beat me in the ring, if there’s someone like that out there and I sort of had made my mental choice that it’s gonna be Will Ospreay, I wanna make sure that they can not only have the greatest of performances but they can capture the fans’ imaginations and they could have them cheer for them, more so by just the sheer heart that you possess in your performances but also, just by the volume of workload. I want as many cities and as many countries to see Will Ospreay as champion as possible. In that moment, absolutely, that was the best choice that I could make was having Will be the next guy. I don’t know if you wanna call it a passing of the torch, but certainly, I don’t feel like I’m disappointed for losing the belt. I feel the opposite. I feel like I lost it to someone who is just, at this point in his career, hungrier than me, and someone who can take up the schedule that the fans deserve for their main event champion to have.”

Omega also gave his thoughts about the worries he had about possibly being injured early in his match against Ospreay or having stomach issues on the day of the show.

“There was always this worry before Wembley especially, where I thought, man, I wanna do the best I can. But what if I injure myself in the first five minutes of the match? What if I’m having a terrible stomach attack on the day of and I can’t really show what Kenny Omega’s all about and give the people the show that they paid for and deserve? So I had all these worries, and I remember showing up the day before. There was a Fan Fest event there. But I was also able to see the ring a little bit and the setup, and once I saw the setup and I felt the ring, I thought, something’s telling me — again, I don’t know from where — I don’t know who it was — but something’s telling me, I’m having this intuition, that this match is happened to go from start to finish and it’s gonna be good, and I’m gonna make sure the fans leave home happy and even if there’s an injury incurred or whatever, I know we’re gonna get through it, and some sort of otherworldly force just had me believing then and there — accidents do happen. You can never control them. But I just felt like there’s not gonna be one this match. It was a very odd feeling but I felt it profoundly as I was staring and gazing amongst the ring. It was a very good, reassuring feeling because I hated that — it’s just in the pit of your gut where you think there’s always that percentage that you could injure yourself. Roll your ankle in your entrance, you know what I mean? Because it was raining. It’s like a slick ramp. You have to be very careful. You could moonwalk your way down easily if you wanted to. But man, it got so slippery. You had to be very careful, and it was raining during my entrance, I think, so I thought, oh boy, this is either really cool or I’m asking for it, but, I’m just glad the match got to go off without a hitch, and that I didn’t lose via injury or something that was beyond my control. I’m glad I was able to go out, give my all and do the best that I could.”

Omega also gave his thoughts about the mentality he has when it comes time to prepare for his marquee matches.

“I always do the best that I can but I do try to go outside the box when the option’s there and for my big matches, absolutely, always try to think outside the box because in my biggest of matches, I think that both myself and my opponent, for the most part, have the best of intentions to make the match as a whole look good rather than just make themselves look good. So I’ve been lucky in that regard.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, & 3