Jim Cornette has explained he believes that Theory is a “better worker” than former AEW World Champion Kenny Omega.
By it’s very nature professional wrestling is a subjective artform. Fans, pundits and wrestlers all have their favourites and often for a variety of different reasons.
While some fans prefer a good story over ‘work-rate,’ for others an in-ring 30-minute epic is much more important. However, this opens up another debate over what it means to be a “good worker.”
In the eyes of many, and generally more long-time fans, this means matches and moves which look realistic. By contrast in more recent years, a wrestler’s ability to perform a wide range of moves has taken on more importance.
One man who favours a more traditional definition of what makes a “good worker” is veteran wrestling personality Jim Cornette. Speaking on a recent episode of his podcast the Jim Cornette Experience, the legendary manager explained that by this metric, Theory is a better worker than Kenny Omega.
A pitcher, young pitcher knows how to throw but he don’t know how to pitch, then as he gets older learns how to pitch some of them don’t. And some wrestlers, they can do all that sh*t when they’re young. But as they got older, the good ones would learn how to work and the bad ones wouldn’t.
And for the same reason that right now Austin Theory is what we say earlier in this programme. He’s 24 years old. Yeah, he’s a much better worker than Kenny Omega is and ever will be right now. Because he’s a better worker. Because work has nothing to do with doing the f*cking moves.
It helps if you can, but it seems to me that a guy like Theory understands what the business is, or at least has to be now. He’s, you know, in the old days it was understanding what the business is, it’s more important to get them to believe what we’re doing than it is to put on a great show, because they’ll come back to see more of it.
We give them a great show, they’ll never come back again, we piss them off and make them want to come back and see next week, we’ve made more money. But just with Austin Theory, his basics, his fundamentals, the way that he moves, and conducts himself in the ring, and the things that he does, the moves that he does, and the things that he does fit him, and don’t embarrass or hurt the business or anybody that he’s working with.”
By contrast, Cornette feels that Kenny Omega lacks the in-ring psychology of the young WWE star.
“Twinkle Toes [Kenny Omega], just does moves and dives. He doesn’t have any idea how to put a match together to make sense from start to finish. He can’t f*cking hit the ropes properly, he is self trained, he acts like he’s a video game character. And that’s one dimensional, and f*cking blah, it’s the same thing all the time. Because he’s acting like he’s a character in a video game. That’s why his matches don’t make sense. That’s why nobody sells anything except when they do sell they hit the right button so they got to sell.
Theory is a guy like MJF, he’ll be able to play with your emotions, he’ll be able to take you on a ride, he’ll be able to psychologically and subliminally get you into what he’s doing because there’s no holes in the logic in the match. And if Theory he has as much freedom on promos, as MJF does, he’ll be able to talk you in.
Instead of just this goof, pretending to be a video game character because he likes to sit around with his joystick and one hand and press the buttons on his video game with the other one. That’s why Austin Theory is a much better worker. I didn’t say acrobat, I didn’t say move doer, I didn’t say performer, he’s a better worker. And for the business that we’re in relies on working or it used to and it still should. There’d be more people watching it.”
Jim Cornette and Kenny Omega have repeatedly clashed on social media over a number of issues and the situation shows little sign of slowing down. Speaking in a recent interview Omega hit out at Cornette over his “hateful speech” which he claims makes its way into the AEW locker room.
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