When news broke that former Stardom booker Rossy Ogawa was leaving the promotion and their partnership with New Japan Pro Wrestling behind to form a new promotion headlined by eventual WWE signee Gulia, it raised eyes around the professional wrestling industry, especially among western fans who weren't as familiar with the goings on inside of the Japanese wrestling scene.
Had Ogawa, who ran the biggest female promotion in Japan, been secretly funneling talents to WWE while preventing his cross-over stars from working in AEW? And consider how quickly the tides turned once he left, with top performers like AZM and Mina Shirakawa immediately showing up in AEW/Ring of Honor right after he left.
Asked about Ogawa and his new promotion's connection to WWE on his Twitch stream, Kenny Omega weighed in on the situation, noting that there are far more issues with the former Stardom booker than who he chose to put over in a wrestling match.
“From someone who lived it, breathed, who has very close friends in the industry. I don't necessarily mean the wrestling industry, I mean the industry,” Kenny Omega explained via Fightful. “The government issued press. The information they know. I'm just going to leave it at that. I would say don't be so quick to listen to praise for that individual because someday, I'm not sure when it will be. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but someday, people will know the truth. What they do with that truth, I don't know. Will they share it? Maybe. A lot of the higher ups in Japan, they know exactly what,” he said.
Asked to further clarify his opinion later in the stream especially in relation to Ogawa's alleged connection to WWE, sending stars like Gulia and Kairi Sane to the promotion over AEW, Omgea explained the situation further, noting that, in the end, he sides with Asuka against the promotion.
“My comments on Rossy are whatever. There is nothing to say. I just think, eventually… I don't care about Rossy being an E-Drone. That's no big deal. He's done.. that's not even the tip…just you friggin wait. If you are still interested in wrestling and you're listening to the stories and reading stuff. When it finally comes out. I will say one thing, there are a lot of people who refuse to work for him for the very same reason. Some of those people are in WWE. Some are in AEW. They have a very good reason. It's not just, ‘I decided to wake up and not like this guy,'” Omega noted.
“If you want to know along what lines they tread amongst, the dude just flat out said, ‘We're looking for girls ages 13 to 21 that don't have a boyfriend and aren't married.' We already know he puts underage girls in very revealing swimsuit calendars and books. I wish that's all he did. Let's put it that way. I don't know. I don't want to say anything. I'm not going on record to say anything. I don't want lawyers barking at my door. That's why I don't want to say anything. I don't have any sort of video evidence, I just have the good word of people who are very close. I'm outside of it. If those people feel like commenting or saying something, whatever. For now, I'll say that people going to Marigold, good luck. I hope you have a great time. I hope it works out for you. For me, I would be very hesitant. I would be very hesitant. That's all. My only comment, I'm with Asuka. That's it. We are bros. Always have been. She has her reasons and they are probably the same ones as mine.”
Before going any further, what, you may ask, does Asuka have to do with this situation? Well, she had plenty to say on the subject just last year on her social media account and highlighted just why she will likely never work another show for Ogawa, regardless of how her career shakes out in WWE.
Asuka doesn't trust Rossy Ogawa for their interactions in Stardom.
Taking to the platform then known as Twitter to discuss her public interactions with Stardom since leaving the promotion, Asuka broke down why she is such a controversial figure in Japan, with the people inside of Stardom – Rossy Ogawa – using the media to take shots at her.
“I don't flatter anyone. Even in Japan, the media hated me because I don't flatter the media. In Japan, everyone was flirting with the media except me. I fought the media alone to take care of my fans. That's why some of the Japanese media still hate me. That's why I've always been a freelancer. And Everyone in Japan knows I am anti-Joshi Pro. Always,” Asuka wrote on social media via NoDQ.
“The former editor-in-chief of Pro Wrestling Weekly has made this point on several occasions. That is, Stardom is an organization that was created to defeat me. It is an organization that was created to destroy me personally. But they failed to defeat me. I don't know what happened to them after that because I came to America.
“The media could not bring me down when I came to America. They must have really wanted me to fail. I am used to it because I have been fighting my critics alone since my days in Japan. But now that I am here, I have comrades in arms. Charlotte, Becky, HHH, and… I've walked alone in the wilderness all my life, and here I have an oasis. To the Asuka antis, I say, beat me up on the Internet all you want. I grab everything.
“When I became champion, one media outlet asked wrestling fans, ‘Do you think it is good enough to be champion? “Do you think it deserves to be champion?' Compare me to other people. Do you think my abilities are inferior? Can you believe that? I was always fighting that media all by myself.
“What I just said is in the past. It was before I came to America. Now, the organization has changed, and there are few players I know. So, I don't know anything about it, and good luck to everyone who's trying their best. I'm especially concerned about Syuri and Shirakawa, that's all.”
Could Asuka and Omega simply be bitter with Stardom over booking decisions and normal backstage interactions? Sure, both were very involved in the same scene during their tenures on the Japanese scene, and they very well could have fallen on the wrong side of Ogawa, where others, like Sane and Gulia, sing his praises. Still, when the news broke that Marigold was looking for “single, unmarried women between the ages of 13 and 30,” it turned more than a few heads around the industry for the same reason Omega suggested, as exploiting young, vulnerable girls in the name of professional wrestling is nothing short of terrible.
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