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Yeah it's mostly rooted in KENTA being a NOAH trueborn. Japanese culture seriously values company loyalty. A portion of the audience will always hate KENTA, because he will always be seen as a representative of NOAH. You can see in pretty much every KENTA match so far, the crowd has generally cheered his opponent because he's not seen as 'their guy'.
It's why despite his popularity, SANADA (orginally an All-Japan guy) will never surpass Naito in terms of popularity and will probably never break out from under his shadow.
Even Okada isn't fully exempt from this. He at least went to the NJPW dojo and through the Young Lions program, but he still originally started at Toryumon. Yes he is still extremely over and a megastar by Western standards, but there is still a small pocket of the audience who would never accept him as a true representative of NJPW. That's why, while popular, he's still not as popular with the NJPW audience as Tana.
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