There’s still no timetable for Kenny Omega’s return

It was well known Kenny Omega was working through a long list of injuries during his 2020-2021 Belt Collector run through AEW, Impact & AAA. Dropping the AEW World title to Hangman Page at Full Gear last November meant he’d be taking time off to deal with them.

Initial reports indicated he was shooting for a February return to the ring. That pretty quickly shifted to “no timetable”, and February’s clearly come and gone with no sign of Omega.

This week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter has an update, and it sounds like it will be a couple months at the very least before we see The Cleaner in a wrestling ring.

Omega is said to be recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery. While it’s not clear when exactly that took place, the rehab window is said to be ten weeks. Kenny also still needs an operation to repair his sports hernia, which will require two months to recover from. And Dave Meltzer writes “there’s also other things he’s taking care of.”

So even if he’s able to deal with these other issues while coming back from the knee and hernia procedures, the most optimistic return window probably doesn’t open until June.

There’s been a lot of analysis and criticism of AEW’s roster size, but a situation like this — or Jon Moxley’s recent time off — demonstrates a clear benefit of it. Performers don’t have to rush back to keep a show or company afloat when there are others to rotate into the top spots. It also keeps the main event scene fresh.

Will Kenny still be as popular when he returns? It’s the risk of taking time off for any reason, but the reaction his music got on Revolution’s pre-show (before that Don Callis showed up instead) indicates