Joey Janela Wants A Match w/ Omega, Talks Elevating Deathmatches

Joey Janela recently spoke with Emily Pratt for Uproxx; you can read a few highlights below:

Janela comments on bringing back names from the past for his branded shows:

Yeah, it’s like living your VHS dreams. You know, me grabbing the VHSs from the vendors’ tables. I wasn’t much of a – I was too young to be a tape trader, really, I think – a lot of guys were tape traders; they would trade tapes with each other. I would just go to local indie shows and there would be a vendor there with the tapes that had been traded around and guys like Hakushi and, you know, Japanese legends, you know. F*ckin’ I wrestled Hakushi, f*ckin’ Great Sasuke… We’re bringing [Atsushi] Onita in for the next show even though his knees are f*cked. That’s like me living my childhood dream and it’s just a wild situation.

Joey comments on All In changing his outlook on WWE being his ultimate goal:

Yeah, I think for sure. It’s the ultimate goal. It’s WWE. But there was no All In before that, you know? And no one knew what was going on. That wasn’t there. That wasn’t an option. And, you know, I was like, “Shit, I want to wrestle on WrestleMania. Once I wrestle on WrestleMania I can die happy and that’s it. It can be a f*cking battle royal; it can be whatever.” Then I realized, “Shit, I can do a lot more than this.”

I can make a lot more money, and, you know, I can live my dreams, and when I’m forty-one years old, forty years old like AJ Styles, you know, look at my options and sign to WWE when I have kids and a wife and, you know, I want a legacy. I don’t want a f*cking – a couple years ago you could look at me like I want to die in a wrestling ring. I probably did have a death wish, but now it’s like, shit, you know, I can make a lot of money doing this, and shit, maybe even be a millionaire one day. Who knows? And if I’m a millionaire, I’m f*cked.

Janela talks about bringing deathmatch wrestling to a bigger platform:

[I]t’s actually the first of its kind. It’s not the next of anything, but there’s a thriving f*cking thirst for blood and wrestling. It’s not with WWE – no one’s doing this shit right now, and my goal is to pull this shit off on a grand scale at AEW or bring Game Changer Wrestling to the next level with all these f*cking crazy guys. It’s, you know, I hope we all can work together in the future. I hope I can bring AEW and GCW together… They have no limits there. They want to go as wild as possible as well, so hopefully, we can bring everything together and bring deathmatch wrestling to that next level.

Janela says he thinks there will be some kind of deathmatch element to AEW, adding:

Yeah, I think so. I mean, you have two of the most famous guys who have participated in death matches, me and Jimmy Havoc, on the same roster, and my goal is to bring that to a big arena and not hold back and not let them tell me, you know, what a deathmatch – I know what a deathmatch is and if you want that type of situation on your wrestling show, I’m going to bring it. Jimmy Havoc’s going to bring it, and, you know, I’m looking forward to working with these guys. These guys are open to a lot of ideas and they’re f*cking great dudes and I can’t wait to work for AEW.

Janela says when he returns to the ring, he wants to face Kenny Omega:

Kenny Omega. One hundred percent. You may not see it, but me and Kenny Omega a lot of people have told me that are friends with him, friends with me, say, “You guys are very similar people. Very similar people in the ring in the way you think, creativity and improve and the way you do things.”

Kenny Omega is number one right now and that’s one of the main reasons I signed to AEW is to have a match with Kenny Omega and I want to have that match to – there’s still a lot of naysayers who might say “Joey Janela can’t go,” but everyone knows, or my fans know, that I can go with anyone and have a two hour match with anybody, and that’s the way I am. And Kenny Omega is the one I want to wrestle, and I want to have my match with Kenny Omega. I want to have that match, that Okada-Kenny Omega match in the States with that man, and a match that just lives on in history and everyone’s raving about for years to come.