Kenny Omega is one of the best wrestlers in the world.
If you don’t know anything else about him, you probably at least heard that he was the first gaijin to win New Japan Pro Wrestling’s annual G1 Climax tournament in 2016. His phenomenal series of matches against Kazuchika Okada has been praised by Dave Meltzer as being better than the classic Ric Flair vs. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat trilogy; Edge credits them with getting him back into watching wrestling. As for yours truly, Omega is the one wrestler I’d like to see in WWE more than anyone else. (Except maybe the Young Bucks. I’m not sure.)
But back in 2011, long before Omega became one of the biggest names in the business, he wrestled a 9-year-old girl.
No, seriously.
Omega explained on the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast earlier this year how the match came about. In a nutshell, the girl – named Haruka – was upset that she hadn’t been picked to train to become a pro wrestler, so DDT asked Omega if he would work a match with her:
[F]or whatever reason, when we were scouting talent and recruiting talent, in the beginners class, there was this little girl and I believe she was seven years old. And she was a huge wrestling fan and she was really jealous and heartbroken that all these girls were getting scooped [up] from the shoot boxing academy to become pro wrestlers because she was the biggest fan of them all. So they felt bad and they wanted to find something for her and so they had asked me because I had done some mix [gender] stuff before in Japan on the indies and said, ‘Kenny’s really good. He’s safe. He [has] helped some of our developing talents become better and maybe you could work with him for a couple of weeks and see if we can get you to a point where you could do something in the ring.’ And so, I said, ‘yeah, sure!'”
You must be a safe worker if you’re trusted to wrestle a little girl. Understandably, at the time Omega worried that the match could be “career suicide,” but as we all know now that clearly wasn’t the case.
In fact, once you get over the fact that he’s wrestling a little girl, the match is actually highly enjoyable and not half bad. Haruka’s a teenager now; I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns up in a wrestling ring again soon.
Watch the match below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAaDyWHRCeU]
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