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Kazuchika Okada Defeats Kenny Omega To Win AEW Unified Championship At AEW All In: Texas
Kazuchika Okada is the inaugural AEW Unified Champion. AEW - AllEliteWrestling.com

With AEW holding its biggest show on United States soil in company history, it only made sense that a match seven years in the making would be a critical piece of the card. 

And this time, new gold was on the line.

Kazuchika Okada defeated Kenny Omega to win the inaugural AEW Unified Championship match, unifying the AEW Continental Championship and AEW International Championship Saturday evening. The former IWGP Champion took advantage of a Don Callis ref interference spot earlier in the match to eventually hit a Rainmaker to seal the win. Okada will now carry the lineage for both title belts as the new Unified Champion, as Tony Khan noted on the AEW All In: Texas media call earlier in the week.

The match was the fifth iteration between the two, a follow-up to their epic four-match series from 2017 and 2018 that was foundational for AEW’s existence. Okada first retained the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Omega at New Japan Pro-Wrestling Wrestle Kingdom 11, then the two wrestled to a 60-minute draw at Dominion later that year. 

Omega would follow that with a G1 Climax win over Okada in August of that year, before finally beating him for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in an epic two-out-of-three falls match in June of 2018. 

Okada first won the Continental Championship from Eddie Kingston on the March 20, 2024 episode of AEW Dynamite, and has held the title for almost 500 days. Omega, meanwhile, defeated Konosuke Takeshita for the International Championship at AEW Revolution earlier this year. 

The fate of the two belts is uncertain at this time, as Khan also mentioned that there will still be a Continental Classic this winter. 

This article first appeared on Wrestling on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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