Kenny Omega Issues Apology For Booking A Registered Sex Offender On ‘CEO x NJPW: When Worlds Collide’


CEO x NJPW: When Worlds Collide, a wrestling show that was a collaboration between CEO Fighting Game Championships, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and Kenny Omega, took place on Friday night at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida. While CEO x NJPW was a hit among many fans, Kenny Omega was the source of controversy when it was revealed that registered sex offender Chasyn Rance performed in a dark match, as reported by Ringside News.

Chasyn John Rance, also known for appearing on VH1’s Tool Academy, was arrested in 2010 and was charged with lewd or lascivious battery, a second-degree felony, after having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 2008, and Rance was 25-years-old at the time. As documented by the Orlando Sentinel, the girl’s mother was reading her daughter’s diary when she saw some disturbing material. The teenager wrote that she had smoked pot, drank alcohol, and had sexual intercourse with Chasyn Rance. The mother then took her daughter and the diary to authorities to report the incidents. The Orlando Sentinel describes what followed.

“During the interview, the girl said she had more than one sexual encounter with Rance at his Orlando home. She also said that she had spent time with him at the beach and slept in the same bed — without having sex — and still communicated with him regularly through phone calls and text messages. The girl said the two had talked about getting married after she gets older, but that she thought he should ‘go to jail for about a hundred years’ because he was bad and cheated on his girlfriends…During a series of three phone calls recorded at the sheriff’s office in April, Rance told the girl that he thought she was ‘cool’ and that he had been drunk during their first sexual encounter.”

As Ringside News documented, Rance plead no contest to the charges, and as documented by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the professional wrestler is a registered sex offender. Once news hit that the sex offender was in a dark match at CEO x NJPW, Kenny Omega received a lot of heat from fans on Twitter for the booking.

On the morning of June 30, Omega posted a series of tweets explaining that he was not involved in the booking of that particular match. As documented by Cageside Seats, Omega stated that he didn’t feel he was working with any criminals, that those involved in the dark match were “polite,” and that he will be more careful in the future.

This series of tweets also caused some backlash for Kenny Omega because many fans felt he failed to do his job by not vetting the talent on the roster that were wrestling that evening, and that someone acting “polite” is not an accurate way to determine if someone is a criminal, let alone a sex offender. Later in the afternoon on June 30, Kenny Omega released a detailed statement and apology on Twitter.

The IWGP heavyweight champion thanked everyone who attended the event and gave a heartfelt apology to anyone who was offended by Chasyn Rance being on the card. Kenny Omega then stated that he will personally issue a refund to anyone who attended CEO x NJPW that couldn’t enjoy themselves because of Rance being on the card.

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