Kenny Omega Wants To Shake Hands With Controversial Ex-WWE Coach
Kenny Omega wants to shake the hand of the man who made life difficult for Omega in WWE’s developmental system.
Many pro wrestling fans may only know Kenny Omega because of his work in the last decade as one of the best NJPW wrestlers ever and a founding father of AEW. However, Omega started as a pro wrestler in the 2000s, even though he didn’t become a big deal in that decade.
From October 2005 to August 2006, Omega worked for the WWE territory known as Deep South Wrestling in the Atlanta area. It was one of the ways WWE was using to develop talent at the time. Omega didn’t like it, so he requested his release in part because he didn’t like the trainers.
One of the leading trainers at DSW was Bill DeMott, who wrestled as Hugh Morrus (humourous, get it?) in WCW and later in WWE for a brief run. After retiring as a wrestler, DeMott became known as a trainer that was hard on the wrestlers. Over the years, many wrestlers complained about DeMott bullying them. DeMott had multiple runs as a WWE trainer before leaving in 2016.
While speaking on his Twitch stream, Omega was asked if everybody calls him Kenny, which led to the current AEW International Champion talking about his WWE development run with DeMott as the trainer.
“Somehow, that name survived all throughout my life. Even when I was able to go to developmental, I was somehow able to cook up a story to allow myself to be Kenny Omega. I also think they allowed me to remain Kenny Omega because Bill DeMott at that point was kind of like, ‘I’m gonna make sure you never get called up anyway so you can do whatever the f**k you want.’ ‘Cool, Kenny Omega it is, brah. It’s all good.’
Sometimes I wonder how Bill is doing and what’s happening with him. I would love to speak with him again, shake his hand. I always had a theory that he was just trying to continue the character that he was famous for on Tough Enough.
I do think Bill DeMott, the man, the person, he’s probably a nice guy. He’s probably funny. Probably. He said some funny things sometimes. You could say he said things that are humorous. That’s the best I got [laughs]. No, I would love to shake his hand.”
“He Allowed Me To Build A Lot Of Character” – Kenny Omega
As he continued, Kenny Omega explained what he learned from DeMott in terms of character building.
“I honestly mean that he allowed me to build a lot of character. Character that I never would have been able to build, character that I wouldn’t have been able to allow me to survive the environment and the American indies.
He toughened us up, allowed for me to develop a palette to eat s**t on a daily basis over and over again, get the f**k beaten out of me on a daily basis over and over again.
Be told that you’re nothing, that you’ll never be anything, that you’re not good enough, that everything you do is wrong, that you suck, but he taught me, through that, if you can endure that, you emerge as a better person, a tougher person. For that, I would love to shake his hand or buy him a meal or whatever. Have a fun conversation with him.”
Kenny Omega will be in action at AEW’s Double or Nothing PPV this Sunday, May 25th. It’s an Anarchy in the Arena match where Omega will team up with Samoa Joe, Katsuyori Shibata, Swerve Strickland, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Willow Nightingale vs. Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Young Bucks, Wheeler Yuta and Marina Shafir.