Will Ospreay

[Dylan Waco]

Discuss Here.

[NotJayTabb]

Ospreay wouldn't make my top 20 British workers today, never mind my top 100 of all time. No chance.

[InYourCase]

No chance and I think he's pretty good, but he's been pretty good for what, a year now? Maybe in 10 years he'll find his way onto my list.

[GSR]

This seems a really 'of the moment' sort of nomination.

 

It seems criminal to me that people are nominating the likes of Ospreay, Jonny Storm, Rampage Brown but overlooking a shedload of great British WOS era workers.

[Carlosa]

SOO... what do people think now?

I have no clue. I'm not in love with everything he does, but he does have tons of great matches, at least in my opinion. He was above average as a junior heavyweight even if all of his performances weren't exactly good. It kind of depended on who he was in the ring with. But I really like him now that he's a heavyweight. He's cut down on the flippy bs and he's looked so much better. Five years ago I would've said no, he's not enough, but now I think he might be able to sneak onto my list, even if it's 100-90. I don't know. I feel like if I were to watch some of his early junior heavyweight matches I would be turned off. I like current Ospreay, he's one of the better wrestlers right now IMO. Maybe the best in the world. 

 

 

[EnviousStupid]

Personally, I think Ospreay was at his best as a Jr. Heavyweight working from behind against established NJPW stars. I'm probably in the minority of people who feel that way, but the style appeared to (at least initially) reign in some of the worst aspects of his performances that often got out of hand on the indies, while still emphasizing those athletic flips and dives that look genuinely outstanding. I don't think he ever really transitioned out of the acrobatics, just that he wants to be strike heavy alongside the high-flying offense. In theory I think that last part sounds a bit like Misawa, except I don't find it appropriate at all for Ospreay in practice. Hate the way he carries himself, groan at the way his matches all come across as Okada-like, loathe the overacting and his selling nowadays, care less and less for the big spots each time I watch them done, and have really despised how he's picked moves from various wrestlers to input into his finishing stretches, most recently teasing and even hitting the One-Winged Angel. Very frustrating wrestler, especially now that he's able to dictate the direction and pace of most matches he's in.

To his credit though, he's one of 6 or so wrestlers to have over 100 matches with an average rating of >8.00 on Cagematch (the others I know of being Danielson, Chris Hero, ZSJ, Okada and Tanahashi). Maybe that fact will hold weight with some fans.

[Ma Stump Puller]

I love the match where his leg gets worked on for half of it and then he starts throwing out big flips in response, great psychology

But yeah Ospreay's a great spot worker but his direction and ability to put a match together are dreadful: you end up having a mess of stuff all across the board and usually rather bloated as a result. His best matches come when he's forced to work with somebody who course-corrects his antics and makes them palpable. Other than that, you have a weird blend of traits that should realistically give a ton of great matches to work with but instead kinda just results in confusing matches most of the time. He's improved from his earlier years; I'll give him that. Top 100 wrestlers? Absolutely not.

 

 

[Tetsujin]

He's a worse version than Kenny Omega's worst version. I actually really enjoyed his early NJPW run as a Jr from 2016-19, you can see him learning to find an accurate balance to his style over time. I will even say he was NJPW's WOTY for 2019. But as soon as they pushed him to the moon in order to find another Kenny, he went back to being this insufferable attention whore kind of wrestler that I hate, with double the ego. Everything about him cringes me nowadays.

 

Oh and his pre-NJPW stuff is hit or miss.

[kas]

Ospreay's 2016-2019 Jr. run was fantastic, and he was often unfairly maligned for just being a spot monkey when matches like the ones he had against KUSHIDA dispel that notion. Since turning HW, he may have become more well-rounded, but he's lost what drew me to him in the first place and he feels like some mix of Omega and Okada but without the strengths of either. I will say he has had a strong year this year, but not to the WOTY level like some people are saying.

[KawadaSmile]

Very athletic, some very impressive flips, dives and acrobactics. All that is good. However, it feels like that without the proper partner, his matches are all style, no substance. We saw, in a span of like three weeks, Dax and Orange Cassidy work circles around him.

I just really don't like how he uses all his tools or carries himself. Feels like a bit of a waste.

[WingedEagle]

We're now at the point where this guy has a half decade plus of being the WOTY or among the top few.  If he retired tomorrow he'd be in my all time top quartile and I'd have to think long and hard about just how high to place him.  His best days should be ahead of him but between injuries, booking and selective opportunities that's far from a given and yet it can't unwind one of the best careers to date.  Really remarkable.

[Control21]

I don't think he would crack my top 200 as of now. A lot of his matches fall flat with me. I think Ospreay sums up some of the issues with the "Fight Forever" style of wrestling that is so dominant in today's industry. A lot of his matches are about getting moves in and letting his opponent get their moves in as well, but there is a serious lack of urgency and struggle.

[Tetsujin]

On 9/1/2022 at 12:09 PM, Tetsujin said:

He's a worse version than Kenny Omega's worst version. I actually really enjoyed his early NJPW run as a Jr from 2016-19, you can see him learning to find an accurate balance to his style over time. I will even say he was NJPW's WOTY for 2019. But as soon as they pushed him to the moon in order to find another Kenny, he went back to being this insufferable attention whore kind of wrestler that I hate, with double the ego. Everything about him cringes me nowadays.

 

Oh and his pre-NJPW stuff is hit or miss.

While I still feel this way, gotta admit, his 2023 has been amazing. He's probably the WOTY at this point. Also, saw him live in Wembley and man, I just connected with everything he did there. They were the same spots of every match, I know, but something about watching him being this athletic freak, such fluid movement, just in front of your eyes, you just mark out. So I get why he's always so over with the crowds.

[El McKell]

4 hours ago, Tetsujin said:

something about watching him being this athletic freak, such fluid movement, just in front of your eyes, you just mark out.

This is absolutely how I've felt every single time I saw him live, there's something special about seeing him do this crazy stuff both so gracefully & impactfully that I don't think other wrestlers I've seen in person match.

[Troyvang]

He's extremely good. As others have said, and true athlete who just moves so smoothly. He's also among the most-self indulgent wrestlers I've seen and that can make things a slog to get through. He's an all-dessert kind of wrestler. It sounds great at first, but too much makes you sick and craving for some protein and vegetables.

[WingedEagle]

I'd have to think long and hard about how high to rank someone so young, but would likely end up going irrationally high on someone who's only turning 31 in a couple weeks. We're now at at over half a decade where he's arguably the best wrestler in the entire world. Top 10 sounds like something I'd potentially regret. But 20? 30? It'd seem silly to put him any lower given everything he's already done.

EDIT: Ha! Just realized I expressed the same thought 6 months back. Certainly no less conviction today.

[Makai Club #1]

Been following Ospreay since he was 20 working the British Indies. I'm glad that he has gotten as far as he has. He's always been a fun but flawed wrestler but emphasis on fun. He's excelled in every role he's undertook. He was a great Junior Heavyweight, transitioned to Heavy well, had good-great matches with almost every he's had with maybe the exception of Shingo Takagi. Something about those two together leaves me cold and unmoved. And he seems to have instantly connected with the American audiences, although he's been in and out for years, so it's not exactly an instant thing. 

If I had to rank him among the european peers, I'd rank him beneath Gunther (AKA WALTER) and Zack Sabre Jr and that it. I would put Jim Breaks but I haven't seen enough in my mind to justify it. Ospreay just isn't my particular tastes to rank him over these two, let alone some of the best wrestlers of all time but I'll find a spot for him somewhere.

 

[KawadaSmile]

9 hours ago, Troyvang said:

He's extremely good. As others have said, and true athlete who just moves so smoothly. He's also among the most-self indulgent wrestlers I've seen and that can make things a slog to get through. He's an all-dessert kind of wrestler. It sounds great at first, but too much makes you sick and craving for some protein and vegetables.

That's where I was in 2022, and that's where I am in 2024. In terms of being an athlete, he's among the top. He's strong, fast, jumps high, bumps like a madman, has insane acrobatic ability, yet what he does with all that just doesn't connect with me.

I don't think him and Gunther are in the same league, really. 

[InYourCase]

I would genuinely question anyone's ability to analyze wrestling if they don't see the overwhelming greatness in Ospreay at this point. He might not work your preferred style, but there is an objective greatness to what he's been doing over the last five years that cannot be ignored.

He has yet to fail. Everywhere he's worked, he's wound up being a top guy, and I think that really matters. He is one of the best junior heavyweights in the history of New Japan. He had really intricate matches with KUSHIDA, elite-level high-flying matches with Ricochet, big room juniors matches with Hiroumu, and then a bunch of hidden-gem stuff like the MOTYC against Taguchi and the Shibata match. This is all before 2019 when he started to transition into being a heavyweight. 

You can't draw up a better year than the one he had in 2019. He was so unbelievably good in that year's BOSJ, now working as a veteran of the division and leading lesser-experienced guys like Robbie Eagles and Bandido to tremendous matches. That all concluded with a legitimate dream match between he and Shingo that was such a no-doubt 5 star match. In all my years of watching wresting, it remains one of the most satisfying matches I've ever watched. It is here when Ospreay, to me, became an undeniably brilliant wrestler. He found this harmony between what his mind wanted to do and what his body was capable of and he's been riding that wave ever since.

He bulked up, worked the G1 that year as a fish-out-of-water, and immediately proved that he could be a top heavyweight in NJPW. 

This is where I really start to scratch my head with Ospreay criticisms. If you didn't like him as a junior, whatever, I think you're wrong, but there's an obvious bias around anyone that even thinks about incorporating flying moves into their arsenal that I've come to accept it. As a heavyweight, Ospreay throws vicious strikes. Like, this is the type of thing that this forum should be celebrating. He started throwing such a mean-looking elbow that a large segment of the English-speaking NJPW fanbase wanted him to stop doing the move because they thought he actually concussed Kota Ibushi. I thought that was a good thing when it happened in FUTEN? 

The selling complaints are such nonsense. It especially falls on deaf ears with me now that he's the most over guy in an American promotion and he's done it by routinely building sympathy within his matches. I will never buy into this idea that once someone works over your leg, it needs to be rendered useless for the rest of the match. That's ludicrous. These are athletes. I have no problem buying into the concept of them being injured, but not paralyzed, by chop blocks and the like. 

Perhaps his greatest strength at this point, and this has been true for his entire heavyweight career, is that Ospreay as a Misawa-like ability to progress matches. You saw it with both Omega matches. You saw it with the Shingo matches. You saw it with the Danielson match. He can work for a half hour (or more) and never have it drag. I've been watching the guy for a decade and there's plenty of tags and trios and lesser singles matches where he's been great, but Ospreay is akin to a Misawa or a Hashimoto: his best work is done in the biggest moments.

In terms of his peers, I am a ZSJ voter and (likely) a Gunther voter. I should first note that the best matches either of those guys have had have been against Ospreay. I love ZSJ, he has more longevity than Ospreay, but Ospreay has lapped him in terms of his overall package. Again, I love Zack. I cannot fathom an argument that he's had a better career than Ospreay. Same for Gunther, who again, I love. 

At some point, when he gets over in every room he's in, when the best wrestlers in the world do their best work against him, and when forward-thinking critics can't stop throwing praise at him, shouldn't it be obvious that he's one of the 100 greatest wrestlers of all-time? I'm not even saying you have to like him as a wrestler. But how long can people dig their heels in on a guy who ticks so many boxes that we look for in high-level performers? I I don't particularly like Hiroshi Hase or Yoshiaki Fujiwara, but I vote for them, because they are overwhelmingly great. I am still bothered over how dismissive this specific voting pool was of lucharesu and junior heavyweight candidates 10 years ago, though, and I fear a similar trend happening with Ospreay, which would just be maddening. 

He's so comfortably a Top 50 wrestler to me, and realistically, he'll probably finish in the Top 30. There's nothing this guy does poorly. His candidacy at this point is so much more than just the sheer volume of great matches - which by the way, are some of the greatest matches I've ever seen. He's everything you should want in a pro wrestler. 

[Control21]

I liked Ospreay a lot better during 2016-2018 run. Since then, I think he has picked up some of the worst habits imaginable. I'll explain in detail down the line perhaps, but for now, I'll say he is one of the foremost purveyors of the "MCU all-action" style of wrestling that feels like an overproduced action movie or video game than a contest that conveys a sense of struggle. Ospreay didn't create that style of course. You can link it back to the house style PWG encouraged, but Ospreay has indulged in it, especially in America. He chases crowd reactions too much and forgets the psychology/selling part. My personal opinion is that people often confuse "high spirit" no-selling comebacks like Ospreay does and think it conveys psychology. 90s AJPW is often cited to justify what Ospreay does, but those guys executed it entirely differently.

[Quentin]

It’s probably worth prefacing everything I’m about to say with the fact that Ospreay more than likely makes my top 100 pretty comfortably. 
 

I think there is a lot of good about Ospreay, or at least things I give him a lot of credit for. His desire to round out his game was very apparent by 2017. Something like the KUSHIDA BOSJ final from that year was a match at the time I remember being extremely impressed by because even as someone who watched a lot of his work in England, what he showed in that match wasn’t necessarily something I thought he showed in 2014-2016.

He’s firmly one of the best bases I’ve ever seen. Some of the stuff I’ve seen him be able to base for with wrestlers who frankly aren’t very athletic and probably had no business attempting those moves, only were able to pull them off because it was Ospreay they were doing it to. 

He works SUPER hard night in and night out. Every New Japan tour stop or tourney, it always felt like he was busting his ass and I do give him a lot of points for that.

A lot of issues that people I frequently talk about wrestling with have with Ospreay, I don’t always agree with but I don’t think it’s 100% rooted in wanting to be a “hater” or to be a contrarian just for the sake of pushing back on something people love. 
 

The selling gripes with Ospreay go beyond the idea of limb selling. It’s the space between big spots that are supposed to feel important that a lot of people feel like aren’t given the time to breathe or matter the way they’re being presented. There are absolutely people who will harp on his limb selling, but that’s not the entire crux of why people point to that as a flaw of his.

As he bulked up and started to put more into his striking, he became a guy I did like watching in control during matches, because his offense was so great. Beyond the outwardly stunning stuff, something like his back breaker became really AJ Styles-esque. With that, I feel like he became extremely ambitious in trying to have these longer, epic matches with people who he has no business trying those things with like Ricky Knight Jr or Michael Oku or Shota Umino or Yota Tsuji. I’ve seen all of that RevPro run from the pandemic and on and it’s not something that bolsters his case at all. I understand the attempts to “make” those guys, but it all ultimately falls flat for me because it’s the biggest example of it feeling like Ospreay’s bigger=better mindset than finding ways to work around their limitations and making it just as effective. I’m a Bryan number 1 voter and this is one of the main criticisms I’ll see towards him so it’s not just an Ospreay ding.

Another thing that is sort of dishonest to not mention when discussing him is the very legitimate reasons why people don’t like him. We don’t have to rehash all of it, but some of the stuff isn’t just petty grudge holding. Especially when Will is best equipped to work as a babyface, not being able to buy in because of not liking the traits he’s shown as a person is more than fair. 

If someone said Will was the best wrestler of the last 5, going on 6, years, I’m not really going to push back on that a lot. My issue is the sort of manner in which it’s said, that if you don’t feel this way about Ospreay you’re just a hater or you’re not paying attention or denying greatness. Over this span of time I think people like Darby, Danielson, Moxley, Kingston and a few others all have compelling cases for this. Even with European peers like Zack or WALTER as you mentioned, I’ll have both of them ranked as well and probably above Ospreay or at the very least they’ll be close to each other. Huge disagree on their best matches being with Ospreay, though with Zack I can understand that sentiment more. I don’t think that WALTER vs Ospreay match is even a top 15 WALTER match. 

[corwo]

1 hour ago, InYourCase said:

I would genuinely question anyone's ability to analyze wrestling if they don't see the overwhelming greatness in Ospreay at this point. He might not work your preferred style, but there is an objective greatness to what he's been doing over the last five years that cannot be ignored.

 

Is there such thing as objective greatness in a subjective art form?

1 hour ago, InYourCase said:

The selling complaints are such nonsense. It especially falls on deaf ears with me now that he's the most over guy in an American promotion and he's done it by routinely building sympathy within his matches. I will never buy into this idea that once someone works over your leg, it needs to be rendered useless for the rest of the match. That's ludicrous. These are athletes. I have no problem buying into the concept of them being injured, but not paralyzed, by chop blocks and the like. 

Selling doesn't just look like garnering sympathy or limb work rendering bad wheels useless. For me, delayed selling can be just as bad. I saw Ospreay pop up from a turnbuckle brainbuster within seconds in the recent Takeshita match, and that's just one example among countless egregious no-sells he's done over the years.

1 hour ago, InYourCase said:

Perhaps his greatest strength at this point, and this has been true for his entire heavyweight career, is that Ospreay as a Misawa-like ability to progress matches. You saw it with both Omega matches. You saw it with the Shingo matches. You saw it with the Danielson match. He can work for a half hour (or more) and never have it drag. I've been watching the guy for a decade and there's plenty of tags and trios and lesser singles matches where he's been great, but Ospreay is akin to a Misawa or a Hashimoto: his best work is done in the biggest moments.

I also want to push back on the progression aspect of this. Ospreay wrestles minute one like minute thirty. He doesn't convey exhaustion, or weightfulness in any regard.

[EnviousStupid]

I find it interesting that @InYourCase brought up Ospreay's 2019. At the time, I also thought of him as among the best wrestlers in the world, but with the caveat that it overexposed him in my eyes to what he tended to do. Something like that can make the extraordinary dives feel much more ordinary than they should, and I put a lot of the blame for that on the guy who constantly does them. He worked three singles tournaments that year, along with major matches on New Japan's big shows, and I didn't get enough of an impression that he changed up his style, moves, and approach to different opponents to not get bored of him. I understand that to some, that last sentence might sound absurd. He is definitely capable of a lot of great things, but it may be a case of whether he was inclined to demonstrate those capabilities in the frequent opportunities given to him, or to keep honing in on what was working for him at the time for that audience. 

Some of these responses to his criticisms are very odd to me though:

The perceived bias on flying moves didn't stop Rey Mysterio or Jushin Liger from being ranked 5th and 6th in the last GWE. I don't see some of the more modern-day candidates expected to jump up the list in 2026 like Kazuchika Okada, Kenny Omega, or Darby Allin getting much pushback because of their use of dives or springboards. Would Kobashi's moonsault count as a flying move? How about a top splash like how Eddie Guerrero, Mitsuharu Misawa or Hiroshi Tanahashi used in their respective primes? I think everyone expects Bryan Danielson to rank #1 the next GWE and he's still doing flying moves long after the concerns about his concussion history and general health started. 

It's great that Ospreay can throw great-looking strikes, but maybe like with the flying moves, the issues seem to lie more in the way they utilize such moves in their matches. I agree that his elbows and forearms look great more often than not, and yet I'm not interested at all watching the striking exchanges he has play out. "Misawa's elbow is God" not just because it looked stiff, but because it fucking levelled the guys opposite him. I recall Jumbo lying on the outside for minutes after just one, or Kawada collapsing after taking some to convey how much damage they hold. Then again, Misawa and Ospreay are very different types of wrestlers. Shibata's another example: often he'll take a handful of elbows from his opponent before knocking them down with just one. The last few times I watched Ospreay, he likes to show how good his strike looks and sounds, soon followed by trading elbows 50/50 with his opponent no matter their size or stature. This is not how I'd like to see him go about such talents and part of what makes him so frustrating.

I haven't seen all of Ospreay's AEW matches, though I don't think any of them were about building sympathy bar the last 5 minutes of his recent one with Danielson. Nor why him being the "most over guy in an American promotion" discredits selling complaints like he wasn't well-received from the moment he came on having signed to AEW. I do agree about a limb not having to be useless if worked over, but I'd also like that limbwork to have had some kind of meaning in the grand scheme. In my eyes, Ospreay just isn't particularly interested in selling past in the moment. Like @corwo mentioned, the man took a disgusting Turnbuckle Brainbuster that left welts on his back, but no mark on the rest of the match, which happened to be a goddamn back-and-forth.

[Control21]

I find the Lucharesu criticism odd when Dick Togo finished higher in the 2016 poll than the likes of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Terry Gordy. Granted, not a lot of Lucharesu guys made the final 100, but I don't think it completely ignored the style. 

[fxnj]

1 hour ago, Control21 said:

My personal opinion is that people often confuse "high spirit" no-selling comebacks like Ospreay does and think it conveys psychology. 90s AJPW is often cited to justify what Ospreay does, but those guys executed it entirely differently.

Who does this? I enjoy Ospreay's big matches for the high octane stunt shows that they are, but can't say I see more than superficial similarities between him and 90s AJPW.