Kenny Omega comments on failed explosion at AEW Revolution

Image: AEW

AEW World Champion Kenny Omega told Dave Meltzer that he loved this past Sunday’s exploding barbed wire deathmatch at AEW Revolution, but that it was “deflating” about how things turned out.

“Yeah, it was really deflating to do so much preparation, test the explosions, have them be impressive in the rehearsal, and then have it be something so much different than what was promised. It made me appreciate everyone who worked hard and did their part even more, though. But like you said, we really wanted to have a good one, and we added real barbed wire to help with the feeling of danger so we really risked a lot. Again, I loved the match, glad we did it, sucks about the finale,” he said in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

The pay-per-view will forever be remembered by the lack of explosions and fireworks as the ring was supposed to “blow up” after Omega defeated Moxley with help from the Good Brothers. Moxley’s friend turned enemy turned friend Edde Kingston had come out to protect his friend from the blast and laid on Moxley for more than 90 seconds while some quick flares went up from the ring posts along with a few smoke bombs on the outside as there was an apparent technical failure that prevented what was actually supposed to happen.

Meltzer said, “The finish was tested out multiple times, and it worked great every time. Then the time it counted, it didn’t.”

After the show, Tony Khan never directly acknowledged there was a technical failure and said what they were going with was that Omega was a great wrestler but wasn’t good at building bombs.

The goal was to exceed the deathmatch quality and spectacle seen in its Japanese counterparts featuring two of the company’s top stars and rivals. But the long sequence of interference by Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson paired with the lack of a spectacular explosion at the end to Kingston selling an explosion that was supposed to be much bigger was not received well to say the least.