Summary

Donovan Dijak says some WWE Performance Center coaches privately approved of the way he pushed back on Kenny Omega during the Wednesday Night War.

The exchange dates back to the period when NXT and Dynamite aired head to head from 2019 through March 2021. Dijak said he took issue with comments Omega made about the NXT roster, and that frustration led him to fire back publicly at the time.

Quote from Donovan Dijak

Asked about whether there was any internal reaction to that social media back and forth, Dijak said:

"A handful of coaches at the PC said that they liked that I was sticking up for us, cause that’s just kind of how I felt in that moment. When I go back, I don’t even remember what article I was talking about, for those of you who aren’t familiar, there was some sort of article. I think with the benefit of hindsight, he was probably in character when he was doing this, but I don’t know. It was a very volatile time and he said something effective, like everybody on the NXT roster would be a midcarder in AEW or something like that and again I’m paraphrasing, obviously, that’s offensive to me because I’m on the NXT roster, so I took a jab at him. I doubt he took it personally. Maybe he did. I don’t know if he meant his thing personally. Maybe he did. I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to him since, and we only had two interactions before that. It was a time when people were saying all sorts of stuff about the other ones. In my youth, I was the kind of person who enjoyed stoking the flames, so to speak. I had no issue with it. I’ve been on record many, many times saying that I think Kenny Omega is one of the best wrestlers in the world. I can’t say that enough. My anger was about the attack that was happening to us. Ironically, now, pretty much everybody on the roster, on the black and gold roster, is on AEW or has been on AEW at some point. So, you know, I’m sure nobody actually cares. But, you know, like everything else in pro wrestling, you just kind of take something that has semblances of reality and you go off with it. But, you know, that’s just kind of the nature of how it was going back then."

Dijak and Omega's NXT history

Dijak's comments add another retrospective layer to one of the more public talent-to-talent flare-ups from the NXT versus Dynamite era. He made clear that his issue was with what he felt was a shot at the locker room, not with Omega's standing as a performer.

That also fits how wrestlers still talk about Omega years later, whether it is tied to fantasy matchups or old debate points, like when AJ Styles said a singles match with Kenny Omega is never happening.

What Dijak's reflection says about that WWE moment

Dijak's story suggests at least some people inside the Performance Center saw his response as defending NXT during a stretch when brand loyalty was part of the larger on-screen and off-screen atmosphere. It also underlines how heated that period became, even when the wrestlers involved later looked back on it as more situational than personal.

Sources

Donovan Dijak while speaking on the In The Weeds podcast