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fallynleaf-gifs · 1 year

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Wherever I go... whatever country I go to... I want the Golden Lovers to fight with the same emotion and one heart. —Kenny Omega

“What would Kota think?”

2019-2021

This is a long-overdue gifset. I meant to finish it in November 2021, then I meant to finish it in early 2022, then, well, May 2022 happened, and the Golden Lovers story effectively got put on ice, so I shelved the gifset, too. But now we have reason to hope again, so here it is. The Golden Lovers’ path has never been a straightforward or easy one.

I’ve seen Kota Ibushi described as a “ghost” that haunted Kenny Omega for those few years, but I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Kota has been part of the fabric of AEW itself since the very beginning. Despite the fact that he has yet to make an actual appearance, he has been present in direct references and allusions, in the Golden Lovers symbol on the shoulder of Kenny’s gear, and in the golden “E” in “AEW”, which originally came from the Golden Elite.

Without Kota Ibushi, AEW as we know it would not exist. Of course, a large part of that is his continuing influence on anything and everything that Kenny does. Kenny Omega only really tells one story. It’s the same story that he has been telling his whole career. Sometimes it’s a quiet, subtle story, and sometimes it’s a very loud one. Sometimes it’s both at the same time.

The first direct, unmistakable reference to Kota in AEW happened in an infamous Undertale-themed VTR on October 30, 2019. In it, Kenny is plagued by his own insecurity (which was not helped by Kota’s recent G1 win, in contrast to Kenny’s recent failures in AEW), and a seductive voice tries to prompt him to let it take control before his other tag partners leave him, too. But Sans steps in to stave off the inevitable, and Kenny manages to keep it together—for about a year or so.

The next reference happens a little over a week later, at Full Gear on November 9. Kenny has an unsanctioned match with Jon Moxley, and he brings out all sorts of weapons, including a horrific bed of barbed wire that Hangman Page and the Young Bucks were reluctant to help him with. But what gets him in the end isn’t any weapon, but a failed Phoenix Splash (Kota’s first finisher) onto the exposed wood of the ring. From there, Mox hits a Paradigm Shift and pins him. Kenny could endure broken glass and barbed wire, but the one pain he couldn’t withstand is the pain of a broken heart.

After that, he tries to retreat back into the only comfort he knows: tag team wrestling. He pressures Hangman into tagging with him, and the two of them set their sights on tag team gold. Miraculously, they manage to make it work, winning the titles a scant month and a half or so before the world shuts down. Kenny’s main focus is on tag team wrestling during this time, but in order to fix one major blemish on his singles record, he ends up wrestling Pac in an ironman match on February 26, 2020. One of the moves he pulls out is unmistakably a Kamigoye (Kota’s current finisher).

A few days after that, on February 29, Kenny and Hangman defend their titles against the Young Bucks at Revolution. It’s a match with quite a few references and callbacks (especially to the Golden Lovers vs Young Bucks match in 2018), but the most striking moment was the Bucks hitting Kenny with a Golden Trigger (the Golden Lovers’ finisher), which Kenny kicks out of after a mere 1-count, prompting a massive response from the crowd. No one can weaponize the Golden Lovers’ own love against him like that.

The end of that match portends division and betrayal between the four men, but before the story can continue as planned, the covid-19 pandemic hits, and everything in the world of pro wrestling changes.

The year that follows is a hard one. Kenny’s AEW tag title run has a cruel symmetry with Kota’s concurrent NJPW tag title run. Just as Kenny and Hangman finally find their equilibrium, FTR arrives to sow conflict, The Elite fractures, Kenny and Hangman drop the titles, and Kenny gives up on tag team wrestling. Everything in the Undertale VTR had come to pass. Having nowhere else to go, he goes to an old family friend: Don Callis.

Then, at Winter Is Coming on December 2, wrestling in frigid 40°F weather at the open-air Daily’s Place, Kenny beats Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship, thanks to Don Callis helping him cheat. The two of them abscond with the title after the so-called “golden screwjob”, and Kenny takes it somewhere the Young Bucks aren’t willing to follow him—Impact Wrestling.

Thus kicks off the Belt Collector arc. Kenny soon acquires two new/old goons: Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows, both former members of Bullet Club. He starts considering himself part of Bullet Club again, and declares his intent to collect more belts besides the AEW one (and the AAA Mega Championship, which he already had), starting with Impact.

On January 4, 2021, Kota Ibushi wins the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships at Wrestle Kingdom in NJPW. A few days after that, Kenny posts an Instagram story wherein he looks at Sports Illustrated’s list of the top 10 wrestlers of 2020. Kenny is number five on the list, and Kota is number eight. We can see that Kenny was looking at Kota’s entry before he looked at his own.

Then, on January 28, on the three year anniversary of their reunion, Kota tweets at Kenny, proposing that their two companies change the industry together. Kenny replies, using Nak’s translation as a mediator, and says, “Already feeling lonely in the Kingdom I left for you? Shall I destroy it? Take my hand, we’ll build a new one”. Kota responds to him, but receives no answer.

A few days after that, on February 3, Kenta appears on AEW Dynamite, blowing the so-called Forbidden Door between AEW and NJPW wide open. From that point on, we’re truly in uncharted territory.

Kenny challenges for (and wins) the Impact World Championship in April, but leading up to that match, Don simultaneously stokes Kenny’s ego and tries to gaslight him into erasing Kota from his own history. He encourages Kenny to repeatedly say that no one has ever kicked out of the One Winged Angel (only one person actually has: Kota Ibushi. He’s the source of Kenny’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness). However, no matter how much Don tries, Kenny’s age-old insecurity emerges on March 23, when Don names a long list of wrestlers that Kenny is supposedly better than, and Kenny yells out “Bigger than Ibushi!”

Kenny names Kota again in a AAA promo on August 31, listing him among the best high flyers in the world. It’s abundantly clear that to Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi is the greatest wrestler in the world. No matter how far Kenny goes, no matter how many belts he collects, no matter how many accolades he receives, Kota Ibushi will always stand above him in his own mind. Kenny will never be able to outrun him or let go of him. He can’t fill the hole in his heart with a new tag partner, and he can’t fill it with belts, either.

While all of this is happening, Kota is unfortunately not having the greatest summer of his life. He loses the IWGP belt to Will Ospreay on April 4, then gets aspiration pneumonia in July. He participates in the G1 Climax tournament in September and manages to make it all the way to the finals, but he dislocates his shoulder after a failed Phoenix Splash while facing Kazuchika Okada on October 21.

Kenny’s own injuries come back to haunt him, too, but his autumn goes a little bit better.

Adam Cole—an actual ghost from Kenny’s past—comes back to sow trouble for the Elite (though it takes a while to actually manifest), debuting at All Out on September 5 along with Bryan Danielson. Bryan wrestles Kenny a couple weeks later in his first match as an AEW member, on September 22 at Grand Slam. He forces Kenny to fight him with everything he has, and for just a moment, Bryan is able to draw out the Best Bout Machine instead of the Belt Collector. As he always does in his moments of greatest need, Kenny reaches for Kota Ibushi, and once again executes a Phoenix Splash, which, as always, he is unable to actually hit. This time, it doesn’t end in tragedy, though. Instead, the match goes to a full time limit draw.

The death knell for the Belt Collector looms near, however. Hangman Page earns himself a shot at the AEW World Championship at Full Gear on November 13. Three days before the match, they hold a contract signing for it on Dynamite.

Hangman, who knows Kenny very well by this point, is able to read the subtext. He finally figures it out. He realizes that everything Kenny said to him, everything that he did to him and with him, it was never actually about Hangman. It all sprung from a deeper wound that Kenny has carried with him all this time. As soon as Hangman figures this out, nothing Kenny does to him can hurt him anymore. "But if I remember, you once had another tag team partner who maybe you felt like you didn't measure up to either."

That one line also does something else that’s very important: it brings Kota Ibushi out of AEW’s subtext and into the main text. He’s part of the story now. And he always was. (The man himself liked a gif of Hangman’s “you once had another tag partner” line on twitter shortly after it happened. If there was ever any doubt that he’d been keeping up with what Kenny was doing in his absence, it’s gone now.)

Maybe the best illustration of this is a front row sign that a fan brings to Hangman and Kenny’s match at Full Gear a few days later. “What would Kota think?” Kenny stops to stare at it for a long moment before entering the ring. Years earlier, he’d talked about being so surprised and thrilled that the fans had managed to pick up on the Golden Lovers story leading up to their reunion in NJPW. He was so touched by the fact that the fans had known their history, after all that time. I wonder if he felt something similar here. It was in many ways the culmination of his efforts. The story made deeply tangible, here at the climax of its most difficult chapter.

As was always meant to happen, Kenny loses to Hangman and drops the AEW title. He makes one last onscreen appearance on November 17, 2021 before temporarily stepping away from AEW and away from wrestling so that he can recuperate from years of overworking himself. He says, “I feel like... there’s things I gotta fix, there’s things I gotta change, and I can’t do it here.” Is his relationship with Kota one of those things he had to fix?

Here’s where the story gets a bit hazy. Unfortunately, the year that follows does not go particularly well for either of the Golden Lovers, and plans have to get rewritten. Their respective injuries take longer than expected to heal, which leads to Kota having a falling out with NJPW in May 2022 after they try to force him to come back to the ring too soon. Kenny is finally able to make his own return in August 2022, but he returns to a troubled backstage environment, which finally boils over during the media scrum after All Out on September 4. Kenny and the rest of the Elite are forced to vacate their freshly won Trios Championships, and they all get suspended for a few months during the investigation.

But even in the darkest of moments, things aren’t all bad. The Golden Lovers reunite in a restaurant in Japan on September 15. They reunite on their own terms, outside of any company. The future is still a bit unclear for them, but wherever the story goes next, they want to do it right. “Because the tag team with him is more special to me than anything,” Kota says. He asks Kenny to wait for him, and Kenny assures him that he’ll wait as long as it takes. They both proclaim that the Golden Lovers aren’t over.

One day, the stars will align for them again. If it happens in AEW, the stage is already set. "What would Kota think?” was the question posed at the end of 2021. Maybe one day we will get to hear his answer.

#Golden Lovers #Kenny Omega #Kota Ibushi #AEW #Impact Wrestling #AAA #wrestling #gif essays #happy ''Kota Ibushi's NJPW contract is up!'' day to all who celebrate #i am SO SORRY this gifset is late! life really got away from me in 2021 and then it got even worse in 2022 #manifesting a better 2023 for both of the golden lovers and for the rest of us too!!#i don't know how regularly i'll be able to make content for this blog again but i do want to get back into giffing!#long post

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catstling · 9 months

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AEW Full Gear 2020

#aew #all elite wrestling #eddie kingston #jon moxley

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himbos-hotline · 7 months

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Hope you feel better sweetheart <3 what’s your favourite Kenny omega match?

eh a little anxious for tomorrow [i have a telephone appointment to finally see if im eligatble for disability payments instead of "this lazy bitch isnt working" payments" and I am shitting myself ngl over it cuz PIP is like- impossible to obtain according to people who have tried to get it. also just I hate telephone calls]

thers a few:

Hangman vs Kenny full gear 2020

the match where its just a date with wrestling

the bukon peter pan one where kota doesnt look just leaps

the g1 climax

kenny vs the nine year old girl

Kenny Omega & Riho vs Antonio Honda & Miyu Yamashita

Kenny Omega & Riho Vs Michael Nakazawa & Yuka Sakazaki

Hnagman vs kenny full gear

Kenny Omega vs. Tomohiro Ishii

Kenny Omega vs Juice Robinson

PAC vs. Kenny Omega vs. Orange Cassidy Double Or Nothing 2021

Hangman Page & Kenny Omega vs. Young Bucks aew revoution [i still kinda cry over this match its so important cuz you hear nick go "its just wrestling." after matt tries to stomp a mud hole in i think hanger and just...shit]

Kenny vs Trent [Trent says shit on live TV]

kenny vs Tetsuya Naito

#mouse has pals #kenny fuckers unite #match recommendations #kenny omega

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swervestrickland · 2 years

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Hi. I see you as a sort of Hangman expert, so might you have any recommendations of your favorite matches of his or just his best?

Hi! sorry this took a while to answer, yesterday was a super busy day for me so i havent really had the time to reply until now. Thank you for seeing me as a hangman expert; it's totally not the case as I really haven't seen too many matches from before he started in AEW, but I will give you some that I enjoyed for different reasons. Adam Page vs Zane Dawson - CWF Mid Atlantic Wrestling - Jan. 25, 2014: I like this match because the color commentator is literally all of us. He is a very loud country man objectifying and complimenting Adam with his whole chest. There is a point in the match where Adam does a beautiful indian deathlock and the commentator is just. Chef's kiss. I also just love to see baby Adam in all his glory.

Hangman Adam Page vs Kota Ibushi - Supercard of Honor - Apr. 7, 2018: this match really shows off how agile and fast he is and can be. the man stood toe to toe with kota fuckin ibushi. he's a badass.

Hangman Adam Page vs Kazuchika Okada - G1 Climax 28, Day 5 - Jul. 20, 2018: love this one because the story going into it is that Okada, who had lost his IWGP heavyweight championship, was kinda....gone off the deep end. rather than being the badass rainmaker, he dyed his hair red and was all spiky, didn't come out in his badass robe, was always smiling, and had balloons with him all the time. during the g1, i had my url as balloonmakerokada because i thought it was funny. im digressing - so hangman didn't want to wrestle this okada. he wanted to wrestle the badass, the man who held the title for so long people didn't know a world where he wasn't the champion. he wanted the REAL okada. so he spent the entirety of this match trying to bring him out. it's great. he curses, does the okada pose. love that for me. hot.

Hangman Adam Page vs Hiroshi Tanahashi - G1 Climax, Day 7 - Jul. 22. 2018: love this one too for story purposes. the ace promises everyone that he will take the poison out of hangman. he knows he has so much potential and the bullet club is just making him worse. he wants to save him. and they're also both comedy kings. i lvoe them together.

Hangman Adam Page vs PAC - Wrestlegate Pro - May 18, 2019: it seems he's had TWO great matches on may 18 because the takeshita match three years after this one on the same date is also fucking good.

Matches from AEW i've liked him in that i can remember:

Hangman vs Takeshita, May 18 2022

Adam Cole vs Hangman (Texas Deathmatch), Apr 15 2022

Adam Cole vs Hangman, AEW Revolution 2022

Hangman vs Bryan Danielson 1, 2, and 3 - Winter is Coming, New Year's Bash, and the post-All Out dynamite 09/07

Hangman and Kenny vs the Young Bucks, AEW Revolution 2020

Hangman vs Kenny, AEW Full Gear 2021

I'm sure there are more but my memory is really bad. i hope these are good ones for you to start with!

if anyone else would like to rec some, you are more than welcome to!!

also, nonnie, i'm certain my friends @cowboyshit and @adam-page also have some good insight into other matches of his that you might enjoy, as im certain they've actually uh. Watched ROH and possibly NJPW more than i have.

#emi replies #nonnie #hangman adam page #hangman page #adam page

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allelitewrestlings · 1 year

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“I loved the whole thing [with Eddie]. I think it was good, it felt like it was pretty fucking good. Everyone seems to think it was good. I dunno, maybe everybody hated it but I thought it was fucking awesome. “I said ‘I’m telling you dude, we can do me and Eddie.’ I know he’s kind of new and hasn’t had a name on the big stage for very long but I was like, I know this fucking guy. I know me and Eddie can sell a match in four week, I know we can. I just had all the faith in the world."

Jon Moxley vs Eddie Kingston — "I Quit" match for the AEW World Championship AEW Full Gear: November 7, 2020

#jon moxley #eddie kingston #wrestlingedit #aewedit #aew #moxeddie #all elite wrestling #aew all out #feud: moxley vs kingston #event: full gear 2020 #ours: gifs #maker: s #*#tw: blood

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banannabethchase · 1 year

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Wait this is the gayest shit ever at the Full Gear 2020 Buy In they do a whole segment chronicling the Hangman/Kenny relationship and breakdown up until Full Gear 2020 where they have that number one contender match to Don't Know What You Got (Til It's Gone) by Cinderella and...

I can't tell ya baby what went wrong

I can't make you feel what you felt

So long ago, I'll let it show

I can't give you back what's been hurt

Heartaches come and go and all that's

left are the words I can't let go

If we take some time to think it over baby

Take some time let me know

If you really wanna go

Subtlety, thy name is definitely not AEW.

#HOW DID I MISS THIS BACK THEN #HangKenny #Hangman Adam Page #Kenny Omega #Jesus they really aren't subtle about a damned thing are they #wtf i like wrestling now???#Full Gear 2020 #fuck almight i need Hangman and Kenny to interact again sometime soon because I like ficcing them but it's HARD #we be surviving on crumbles!!!!!!#hangmega

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bang-bang-gang · 1 year

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quick dynamite watch rundown

im glad that mox hasnt forgotten about lee moriarty being on the BCC shortlist, even if seemingly everybody else has. he's been so busy being away for work and he's been stepping in to help out his son(s) (im not forgetting shooter here) wherever he can, but claudio's really stepped in for much of the parenting. regal's distracted playing hard to get towards mjf. we all know what bryan's been up to. despite this dysfunctional polycule, moxley STILL wants to expand the family desperately so he's baiting lee moriarty to prove himself.

the elite vignette HURTS and i think we should stop referring to AEW and start calling it AW instead. i have little hope for them returning before Full Gear.

i LOVE lee moriarty's green hair and his neon green shorts, but i would like it better if the colours matched. god i love watching him wrestle though.

the acclaimed birthday bash is absolutely 5/5, best thing in the world. i love max casters silly little outfit i love his shorts. i love that they give billy foam fingers so he can still scissor, even though they tear immediately. i love the love they have for the fans in the audience. i love the fucking ADOPTION PAPERS. i love the risky DX reunion shoutout. i love that they never give billy gunn the mic. i love that his sons-by-blood get offended. i am kinda sad there wasn't more body horror, or sneaky swerve doing more fucked up shit to daddy ass, but i guess halloween is over :/

forget my AW idea from a few bullet points back. keep AEW in the logo but change the wordmark to Acclaimed Every Wednesday already.

you cant pay me to care for FTR but i do enjoy that they come out in acclaimed-pink and stand across them in the same colours

ok so ive been slowly making my way through the AEW back catalog and watching april 2020 now, which is the point britt and tony schiavoni become besties. so britt's segment is extra special to me. i have to say i ADORE how britt neglects to show up with renee and saraya for a sitdown (two new hires, already famous from WWE) and instead insists on doing an interview with her bestie tony, who has been at AEW since day 1 - just like her! PERFECTLY mirrored by how saraya, in her segment, talks about how AEW seemed a cool rebel thing when it started but how it gained legitimacy in her eyes when all the ~big names~ joined. britt's here to say fuck you we're homegrown and proud of it! a recurring theme this episode(*)

the colt cabana thing is insane and extremely funny to me. excalibur called him "marcia cabana's baby boy".

the BCC vs JAS fight was great, ill never ever have enough of this feud. camera suspiciously pulling away from bryan "pussy delirious" danielson & daniel "dragon slayer" garcia at all times because you *know* the moment they laid eyes on each other they [redacted].

rey fenix being too much of a good boi to use the hammer. i love you catboy

keith lee is SO upset by the shit swerve's been pulling! he's laying it all out for swerve! ("ACCUSATIONS! FALSE ACCUSATIONS!") swerve just wants to make up, keith lee wants to know who's sick enough to abet in the mutilation of daddy ass.

i was paying a lil too much attention to twitter drama earlier this week, and jade and marina got a lot of heat because their fight would supposedly be bad or boring. im OBSESSED with the fact that we barely saw them exchange 3 strikes on screen. it was just nyla taunting jade the whole time. nyla's absolutely one of my faves at the moment holy FUCK i needneedneed to see her beat jade for the TBS title sooner rather than later! vicky guerrero's voice is my sleep paralysis demon, she should be on commentary every match mainly because it would make people angry.

house of black epic >:)

TONI'S FINALLY GETTING SOME PLOT??? TONI STORM IS GETTING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT THAT'S MORE THAN JUST "ohh i wanna fight :)"??? WE'RE SEEING JAMIE VS TONI AT FULL GEAR? aaaa

(*) to elaborate on the "fuck you we're homegrown and proud of it" statement: i'm seeing it in britt baker's promo, in the Elite vignette, colt cabana being the mystery ROH champion, even in the Acclaimed's sheer popularity to a degree. people online keep saying they should use the punk vs elite drama as an angle and i think that in this way they are??

#i said quick i never said short #vera watches aew #aew dynamite #veraposting

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