In his most recent Twitch stream where Kenny Omega (and Ibushi) answered a lot of fan questions, he addressed the idea of him going to WWE. Now, put aside the fact that he contractually can not go to WWE from now until Jan 31, 2019, he also made another claim that is rather intriguing for me, where he said: "I don't want to be a robot. I don’t want to be controlled." As much as I respect his career in NJPW, and that, dare I say, he's having one of the best storylines ever in history of wrestling, him making such a claim left me pondering a bit.

Yes, WWE is well-known for scripted everything, and the most baneful thing that they could do to a wrestler in terms of character building is to give them scripted full-blown promo and tell them to learn by heart and spit it out word-to-word in front of National TV. In that sense, yes, all wrestlers can be deemed robotic and controlled by WWE, clicking well with what Omega has to claim.

But apparently, that seems untrue.

Drew Gulak, known for his silly yet rather entertaining (personal thought) Powerpoint Presentation, has recently addressed in an interview whether his promos are his own words or scripted for him that:

They are mostly written for me, but we are given freedom to manipulate them or make it sound more natural. A lot of guys will come in here and they'll just see what's written on the paper and go, 'Ah, I can't do this.' And they'll go out there and do their own thing or they'll have it rewritten for them. I try to do my best with what I'm handed... If something doesn't connect I'll speak up or if something doesn't' look right I have no problem mentioning it.

So if what Drew mentioned is true, it clearly seems that even though scripted promo is there, WWE IS allowing wrestlers to have their freedom to build the characters. Mind you, this is Drew talking about the 205 Live in the era of Vince McMahon, where you could tell things are commonly scripted to the gills. Of course, the idea/flow of a promo still has to be determined by the promoter, but it happens everywhere. In case you say that Kenny Omega can speak whatever he wants in NJPW, please revisit his latest in-ring promo at Honor Rising. The moment he said the phrase "The Best. Tag Team. In the World", it clearly screamed scripted as it obviously lead to The Young Bucks interrupting the promo.

That brings me to another point of argument: perhaps we shouldn't put the complete blame on WWE for a wrestler's demise. The platform is one thing, but it's really up to the wrestler to put him/herself out there a success or a flop. This point has been well-discussed by Stone Cold (SC) & Jim Ross (JR) when they talked about the talent of Kenny Omega:

SC: ...I say [Omega] has a potential to be [successful in WWE], if he's given the platform just to not be put in a box, and be able to do...

JR: The platform is one thing, I agree with you. But when you get on that platform, what do you do with it?... Because we talked about this earlier, that the media and fans seem to more often than not believe that when there's a push that's going awry, or the talent's not getting over, that's always the others' fault, and exclude the talent's. And I believe that the talents can take more responsibility in what they do. They can have a bigger hand in their career than some of them do. Some of them show up and go: "Where's my sheet? Where's my promo? What am I doing tonight?" So you got here, and you didn't know what you are doing. And so you're telling me that the most important thing you're going to do all weeks in television, and you don't know shit about it. You didn't ask the writer, you got in the car, and you got to TV, and the first thing you did before you ask your creative is you got to go to catering. Brother's gotta eat, well then brother go eat. So the platform is one thing, but then if Kenny Omega got the platform, would Kenny Omega be the entrepreneur, and the producer, and the creator, the writer, the athlete... to make it over the top? Because if you don't have that in you, you can't get over the cut. We can't get you over the top by ourselves.

Personally, I couldn't agree with JR more - the wrestler HAS to shoulder a large portion of the blames to if he/she is not over. That can range from his/her obvious lack of talent to his/her attitude in the job.

So back to Kenny Omega's argument. This is not the first time he mentioned WWE being robotic, and I can't help but wonder why he is repeating that point as a reason for him not yet going to WWE? If he wants to stay in NJPW, just stop at "I want to stay in NJPW", and that's it. The more he keeps saying WWE being robotic and controlling, the more I would feel that he's not even confident of his own ability to make his own success there, if he ever makes the move. And if he honestly feels so, I don't want him to ever move to WWE (even when he's 40 and may not be able to cope with the crazy moveset that everyone loves from him now), because he would already have a pre-determined mindset of how life in WWE would go, and his attitude will just bring demise to him and his career there.

tl;dr: The blame for a wrestler's demise has to be shared between both WWE and the wrestler, and the more Omega mentions WWE being too robotic and controlling, the more I would feel he's just not confident in himself being successful there, if he ever makes a move over. Detailed explanation in the post above.

Thank you for bearing through the long post, if you've made it this far. Your comments are unconditionally appreciated :)