Top AEW star Swerve Strickland spoke with Rich Latta about various topics, including facing Kenny Omega for the first time last month.
Strickland said, “In AEW, there’s a laundry list of first time matchups. Just this year, 2026, I’ve had two — about to be my third with Kenny Omega — first time ever matchups. This one’s special for many, many reasons. This is going to show who truly is the future of AEW, who truly is the most important figure in AEW. Everybody that’s ever faced me, stepped up to me — and I mean it that way by stepped up to me, Swerve Strickland — has come out better on the other end. Has become a made man, a made tag team, or reinvigorated their career, reignited a fire in them that the fans or themselves as performers never knew they even had. That’s the beauty of Swerve.”
On being compared to Omega:
“People watch me. They inspire from what I’ve done, because I’m authentically myself and always have been. I never marketed or modeled myself after another wrestler, and it’s hard to compare me to wrestlers in the past because there’s never been a wrestler like me in the past. All those same exact things I can say about Kenny Omega. We’ve never seen a Kenny Omega before, and most likely, we’ll never see another Kenny Omega ever again.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
