Impact Wrestling Cut Kenny Omega Segment Because He Looked Like A 95-Year-Old Man

Kenny Omega worked the last several months before taking hiatus due to some severe and ongoing pain. Kenny was suffering from several nagging injuries and needed to walk away to focus on his recovery. During that time, Omega found it extremely difficult to perform.

The Cleaner was working in multiple promotions with the ailments. At one point, he was the reigning AAA, Impact, and AEW world champion. Kenny Omega finally hit a point where he just couldn’t continue anymore due to the pain. Omega told a story on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio about how Impact Wrestling even had to cut a segment they filmed with Kenny because of how bad it looked.

“I wanted to build myself up as a champion that they wanted to see defeated and there were times when that was more difficult than others. It’s a funny story, actually, when I was at Impact and my hernia got real, real bad. They did a lot of tapings when it was a no-fan arena setting in Nashville. I would be on every week doing something, whether it was showing up at the arena or walking out to the ring to cut a little bit of a promo or interfere in a match.

I wouldn’t necessarily have a match all the time, but it got to a point where I would go, I would do some six-man tag for an app special, another six-man tag for one of the TV shows, maybe another tag match, and then the next day would be the pay-per-view match and then the day after that would be the follow-up TV tapings to like, the pay-per-view fallout.

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Those days would normally have maybe one match but a lot of run-ins, a lot of interviews, a lot of promos. I recall having to do a run-in, I think it was on Sami Callihan or maybe on Moose, or both, actually. Every step felt like I was getting poked in the stomach with some sort of sharp object. I remember Scott [D’Amore] telling me after, he’s like, ‘Kenny, we had to cut that entire segment out. You looked like a 95-year-old man walking to the ring.’ I was like, ‘Well, yeah.’ It was bad. I couldn’t do a run-in. I had to do a walk-in. It was kind of like the hot coals walk where I was just like, ‘Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!’”

Kenny Omega will need to have hernia surgery before he makes his in-ring return. Kenny said he expects the recovery after that procedure to take about eight weeks. Hopefully, The Cleaner is back in AEW looking like his old self again soon!

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Transcription by Ringside News