As of Sunday, October 26th, 2021, Kenny Omega has officially gone over the 736 day mark as the AAA Mega Champion and therefore has broken the record previously held by Texano Jr as the longest reigning AAA champion in its 14 year title history.
When Omega defeated Rey Fénix at Heroes Inmortales XIII in October 2019, few people would have predicted we were in store for over two years of the longest and one of the most historic championship reigns in company history.
Now after 5 official defenses and en route to a sixth at TripleMania Regia, we can fairly critique Omega’s reign and try to conclude truly how much impact ‘the Cleaner’ has had in the Mexican promotion and how his time with the title compares to some of the other great former champions.
The Best
As you may expect, probably the best part of Kenny Omega’s expedition through Mexico thus far has been the incredible matches he’s had during his 24 months as champion and while there have only been five of them and only three of them were against AAA roster members, his matches against Dragon Lee, Laredo Kid and more recently Andrade El Ídolo have been nothing short of amazing.
It goes without saying the other championship matches against Sammy Guevara and Jack Evans also have the Kenny Omega guarantee for a great match but these matches lacked intensity, stakes and of course, a Mexican crowd.
Continuing with the positive impact Omega left on AAA we believe it should be noted how the title prestige is slowly growing and growing following a rough year of no shows at all, in big part thanks to the international reputation around Kenny Omega as one of the best and hottest wrestlers in the world today.
Not only that but now that AAA is starting to run shows normally again and seeing how the AAA – AEW alliance looks to be stronger than ever, keeping in mind Omega’s future title defense against Hijo del Vikingo in December, this is a great chance for Omega to get more defenses under his belt while helping out the younger luchadores such as Vikingo and the aforementioned Dragon Lee and Laredo Kid.
The Worst
Probably the most criticized aspect of Omega’s journey through Mexico is how little exposure the AAA belt and brand as a whole received as a part of their partnership with AEW. It is hard to argue with this as, while AAA stopped running shows all together, we saw Kenny on AEW TV every single week with little to no mention of his ongoing historic reign.
This negative outlook on Kenny as a champion and AEW as a whole is only worsened by the aforementioned lack of title defenses and made worse further by the fact the title defenses that took place outside of AAA’s jurisdiction were against non-threatening opponents like Evans and Guevara.
One final problem with the current Omega championship run is how little involvement Kenny has had in the overall AAA product which, while understandable considering how little shows AAA held and how Omega doesn’t speak Spanish at all, but at the end of the day his run as champion would have been heavily improved by him participating in more segments out of the ring and having more AEW wrestlers make the trip alongside him other than Michael Nakazawa and Konnan.
Other champions
Firstly, the most fair way to compare Omega’s reign to other past champions is to compare it against other non-latin champions, in this case only Johnny Mundo – better known as John Morrison in WWE – and Jeff Jarrett.
These two title reigns happened as a part of the long standing alliance between AAA and IMPACT Wrestling which saw Mundo and Jarrett accomplish 313 and 357 days as champion and 4 and 1 defenses, respectively, with Jarrett even winning the belt twice.
While there is not really a point of comparison between Omega and the other two champions due to AAA taking the pandemic year off of running shows, but to be completely honest Kenny has made far more impact as the champion than Jarrett did and considering Mundo’s reign saw the belt featured even less than with Omega and how he pretty much only feuded with Texano Jr and the then Hijo del Fantasma just might make Kenny Omega the best ever non-latin MegaChampion in history.
When considering all the other champions in the past 14 years it becomes difficult to make a case for Omega as one of the best ever as Cibernetico and El Mesías had just downright iconic reigns as they both carved their respective names in AAA folklore as the two best champions in history.
Conclusion
To wrap up on the impressive and historic title run Kenny Omega is currently on, “The Cleaner” absolutely has a case for the best champion in AAA history but to be brutally honest the lack of title defenses and matches altogether Omega has had on the Mexican promotion makes his claim a little more controversial and subjective.
Like we mentioned, there is a fair case to make for Kenny Omega to be the best foreign champion in AAA history and probably the best foreign star who has ever wrestled for AAA all thanks to his incredibly high work rate and the international audience he was able to attract to AAA’s product.
But when it comes to Omega as the best champion in history there is still a long way for him to go before he can claim to have a better reign than Cibernetico and Mesias who, while not being Mexican, made a name for himself as the best MegaChampion ever and as one of the greats to ever step foot in a AAA ring.
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