Kenny Omega is now a triple champion winning the AAA Mega championship in October 2019 and the AEW world championship in December 2020. Now over this past weekend on April 25 at Impact Rebellion he won the Impact world championship from Rich Swann. However, Swann gave a great performance and looked like a respectable world champion even in defeat – he lost to Kenny By God Omega!
Impact and Don Callis have been looking for a replacement for Tessa Blanchard as the company’s top star since she left the company in June 2020. Swann was the closest thing the company could manage to find until Kenny Omega decided to collaborate once again with Don Callis (who he has known since he was a young man). Impact now has an arrogant and self-centered heel world champion, which works extremely well in today’s era of babyfaces who cannot seem to win over fans no matter what they do.
There is always the slight possibility that Impact could choose to sign a familiar face like Samoa Joe – who could also give Kenny Omega a well-known challenger down the line for the world title.
The especially exciting piece of this article is the possibility of further collaboration between companies throughout the world in wrestling. We are already fully aware that Impact and AEW are collaborating – with The Good Brothers appearing on virtually every edition of AEW Dynamite (because of their affiliation with The Elite in Japan). But the really exciting part is the possibility of New Japan Pro-Wrestling getting involved. Tetsuya Naito and Kazuchika Okada (two of the top three or four stars in NJPW) made appearances at Impact Rebellion, possibly foreshadowing more collaboration between AEW, Impact, and NJPW in the future.
One idea that could turn out to be a phenomenal show is a Supercard between all three of these companies. Two of them have already shown interest in working together and are planting the seeds for bigger storylines with one another. Adding a third company to the mix (especially one from overseas) would only generate more positive news about the collaboration. If this were to occur, it might signal the dawn of potentially the greatest era in professional wrestling for companies not named WWE because of the plethora of opportunities for cross-promotion.
The four matches that took place in 2017-18 between Kenny Omega and Okada in Japan are what officially made The Best Bout Machine extremely well known worldwide, so even the possibility of Omega vs. Okada V is extremely exciting. Impact Rebellion was also the first professional wrestling show to be held in Madison Square Garden by a company not owned by the McMahon family in nearly 60 years, so that is a massive accomplishment and bodes extremely well for the future of the wrestling business. It’s a signal that the industry will be around (and healthy) for many years to come.