Meanwhile Kenny Omega digs even deeper into Final Fantasy for his return to the ring
There’s unsurprisingly quite a bit of overlap between the fighting game community and pro wrestling fans, and that can even carry over to crossovers in the ring as well.
New Japan Pro Wrestling recently took part in the big Wrestle Kingdom 19 event this past weekend where we got to witness Tekken being referenced alongside the return of Kenny Omega.
Although Omega is typically one to do the fighting game crossovers himself, this time it was actually someone else doing the honors.
Bullet Club leader David Finlay came out for his IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship match against Yota Tsuji carrying a peculiar weapon.
Walking out dressed in a long fur coat, Finlay casually strolled up with a fake minigun and riddled his Boss Dawg title with bullets across the screen.
This appeared to be a pretty clear homage to Bryan Fury with one of the character’s victory poses in Tekken 8 has him doing pretty much the exact same thing, and the NJPW Global account seems to confirm this was an official crossover with Bandai Namco’s fighter.
David Finlay’s Wrestle Kingdom 19 entrance was an homage to Bryan Fury in a special collaboration between the BC War Dogs and @TEKKEN pic.twitter.com/HqUc91UfId
— NJPW Global (@njpwglobal) January 4, 2025
Bringing them together like his does make sense considering Tekken 7 already included special Bullet Club shirts in the last game.
Even Tekken Project Director Katsuhiro Harada commented on the entrance and seemed to enjoy it.
That was awesome;)
I love it. https://t.co/xw6l0RyjJq— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) January 5, 2025
It’s just a shame Finlay didn’t do the big evil laugh for Bryan too (or if he did, it wasn’t included in the clip).
On top of that, Kenny Omega returned to his NJPW roots coming back from his extended hiatus at Wrestle Dynasty the following day where he promised something big for his entrance as well.
Omega revealed his arrival back to the stage would be accompanied by a new entrance theme from Final Fantasy 14 and 16 composer Masayoshi Soken with a special voice from the legend Nobuo Uematsu too.
Kenny Omega is just built different.
Always the dude. So happy he’s back.
— Simon Miller (@SimonMiller316) January 5, 2025
It certainly sounded fittingly epic though we wish we could hear it better on the official feed.
This comes after Omega previously cosplayed as Final Fantasy 7’s Sephiroth and used his One Winged Angel theme for an event just over two years ago.
The last time we saw Kenny dressing up like this, however, came a bit later in 2023 when Omega cosplayed Street Fighter 6’s Manon for AEW.
And of course he dressed up as a Street Fighter character before that too when Kenny showed up to Fyter Fest 2019 as Akuma too.
It seems Street Fighter and Tekken will likely continue to dip into the world of pro wrestling, and we aren’t really going to complain about that.