Kenny Omega opens up about Joshi wrestlers receiving online harassment

During an appearance on the Swerve City Podcast, Kenny Omega commented on Joshi wrestlers receiving online harassment…

““If I’m gonna speak frankly, a lot of these — so coming from living in Japan for almost 11 years, on the social media — I mean, of course you’re gonna see it everywhere at least to a small degree. To some degree, you’re gonna find trolls. You’re gonna you’re gonna find people who exist solely to try to make someone’s life miserable. But you’ll never see it to the degree that you see it in wrestling, like you will in America.”

“To hear them ask me like, ‘Why does everyone hate me? Why do they want me to get die, why do they want me to get hurt? Why are they calling me a schoolgirl? And I can say just, ‘Hey, people can be terrible sometimes, and it sucks that you have to listen to that but that’s not everybody.’ Riho for example, went through a tough time when a lot of people thought it was great to, no matter what she posted at any point in time, to go onto her social media and say something super-derogatory. Because to them, or because what someone had taught them, that’s not what a female wrestler should look like.And sure, not every female — it goes without saying, not every wrestler looks the same, not every wrestler has the ability to be built the same. Not everyone is gonna look like Big Bertha Faye in the female wrestling world. Can we have people like that? Absolutely, and I want people like that. But just because someone is a complete brick s**thouse doesn’t mean that they haven’t committed their entire lives to doing what we do, and aren’t genuinely, organically over with the crowd.”

“Sometimes it was even residually because of me. Because there are people that hate what I do, and because they know that I had a hand in signing them and introducing the world to maybe their style or a different style. It’s like ‘Oh, you represent what Kenny does and we hate Kenny so I’m gonna come up with a reason to hate you.’” (quotes courtesy of 411Mania.com)