Will Ospreay

[El McKell]

11 hours ago, David Mantell said:

On a general level Mason, Allmark, Breaks, Bryant and others including Robbie Dynamite (Berzins), Tony Spitfire, Jack Starz, Harry Sefton and Nino's younger brothers Xander and Leland have perpetuated the Traditional British style into the 21st century whereas Osprey and ZSJr are just two guys who fit the bill of what is deemed trendy by the US indie cognoscenti and who just so happen to b3 British.

Firstly, I will say I think you are absolutely correct that James Mason and Dean Allmark wrestle in a style that is a clear continuation of the British wrestling that came before them (no comment on the other wrestlers you've mentioned because I haven't seen them). And I think you're correct that Will Ospreay is a guy who epitomises what is  now the pervasive (almost homogenous) international wrestling style shaped by an amalgamation of Dragon Gate and 90s AJPW 00s ROH and 10s PWG. But Zack Sabre Jr does not fit that bill, Zack Sabre Jr works a style that nobody else works, he is not a continuation of the British wrestling style that came before him (although he takes some influence from it) but he also definitely does not fit the bill of anything that has ever been trendy on US indies.

And because this it the Ospreay thread, I do wanna say it may look like in the paragraph above that I think ZSJ is better than Ospreay. Or maybe just that I am saying Zack is better than Will in one specific way. But I am not saying that. I do not think it is any better to be the only one who does a particular thing, than to be the absolute best at something too many people do. And I don't doubt for a second that when it comes to that internationally pervasive wrestling style of the 2020s nobody does it better than Will Ospreay.

[David Mantell]

4 minutes ago, El McKell said:

Zack Sabre Jr ... is not a continuation of the British wrestling style

The salient point.

[David Mantell]

8 minutes ago, El McKell said:

no comment on the other wrestlers you've mentioned because I haven't seen them

I shall be posting separate matches involving both Tony Spitfire and Jack Starz to the British and German threads at the weekend and you can judge for yourself.  I have seen both live and saw Tony working as a ring announcer less than 2 months ago.
Nino and Jordan I have not seen in the flesh but have seen plenty of on Youtube, particularly on my Smart TV, to the point where they are regular current TV wrestlers in my life.

[highflyflow]

What’s the use of being the absolute best at a style that’s amongst the most aggravating in wrestling today?

[David Mantell]

23 minutes ago, highflyflow said:

What’s the use of being the absolute best at a style that’s amongst the most aggravating in wrestling today?

Which style are you referring to? 

Osprey's high flying stuff or Old School British Wrestling? 

If you mean the latter then grrr, frankly. 😄

(unless you're serious in which case you and I need to have a debate)

[highflyflow]

10 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

Which style are you referring to? 

Osprey's high flying stuff or Old School British Wrestling? 

If you mean the latter then grrr, frankly. 😄

(unless you're serious in which case you and I need to have a debate)

The former, I was directly quoting @El McKell's post. To be clear, I understand that plenty of people love this stuff, but I really don't have much use for a deeply flawed wrestler perpetuating a deeply flawed style and being considered the best of the bunch in one of the weaker decades for wrestling in recent memory.

[David Mantell]

On 12/11/2025 at 9:18 AM, David Mantell said:

I shall be posting separate matches involving both Tony Spitfire and Jack Starz to the British and German threads at the weekend and you can judge for yourself.

Done!  (both)

Quote

The former, 

Fair enough.

[HeadCheese]

On 12/10/2025 at 1:36 PM, David Mantell said:

On a general level Mason, Allmark, Breaks, Bryant and others including Robbie Dynamite (Berzins), Tony Spitfire, Jack Starz, Harry Sefton and Nino's younger brothers Xander and Leland have perpetuated the Traditional British style into the 21st century whereas Osprey and ZSJr are just two guys who fit the bill of what is deemed trendy by the US indie cognoscenti and who just so happen to b3 British.

Teenage Mason was the hot prospect Old School British Wrestling needed in the mid 90s, regarded by some as the last great product of the old time system of brining up talent in the game, (FOOTNOTE: some would argue he shares that distinction with Jason Cross and Justin Hansford and I could add a couple more mid 1990s names like Stevie Bee and Robbie Michaels, but anyway ...) a light in the seeming oncoming darkness of tribute act hell By the Noughties he had the reputation of being able to have a great match with even the proverbial broomstick (no less than Chic Cullen has used those terms in private correspondence to me when discussing James) and charming good guy while equally capable as both a thuggish villain and a slightly edgy tweener on the verge of getting upset with a situation and going heel.

Dean Allmark was in 2001 the frontman of a crew of around half a dozen teenage rookies from the Staffordshire area whose hardcore promotion GBH was shut down by the local council and who were retrained from scratch by All Star veterans into an entire new generation of Old Schoolies. If Mason kept the lights on, the Staffs gang banished the darkness permanently.  The charismatic and boyish Allmark quickly became star turn of this crew and a natural top blue eye for All Star for many years. His long running feud with fellow Staffs crowder Robbie Dynamite was for several years the natural match of the night on many All Star shows.  Mason and Allmark's style meshed well enough for them to have state of the art Grad Brit matches. While some saw mason go into paranoid heel mode others remained technical masterpieces to the climax

Jordan Breaks is a blossoming retro wonder, a serious scholar of the less flashy lights of yesteryear - such as his namesakes Mike "Flash" Jordan and Jim Breaks. Often breaking out in the modern era spots and sequences last seen decades earlier and breathing new life into them. 

 

 

Current British Lightweight Champion Nino Bryant is the heir apparent to the lineage  of the great parade of TBW wonderkids in the 70s/80s like Bobby Ryan. Dynamite Kid (whom the curly mopped Nino physically resembles.) Davey Boy, Danny Collins, Kid MCoy etc. Able to on the one hand have speed and skill masterpieces for his title and on the other to be the raging  fuming underdog in his feud with heavier arrogant heel Tate Mayfairs.  The emergence of his kid brothers Xander and Leland have allowed Nino to walk his first miles in the shoes of the experienced veteran helping to build a younger generation, jobbing a trophy tournament final  his his brother and giving him a competitive title match before ultimately retaining, germinating the next generation.

 

Will try to watch, thank you for sharing

[David Mantell]

On 12/15/2025 at 2:57 AM, HeadCheese said:

Will try to watch, thank you for sharing

It all comes down to an Old School/New School schism in Britain since the 1990s (and highlighted in an invasion angle the FWA did in 2001) with the neo Trad Brit scene as the Old School and the Americanised promotions as the "New School".

Allmark, Spitfire, Robbie Dynamite, Mikey Whipwreck etc were the heirs  to 90s kids James Mason/Justin Hansford/Jason Cross etc who in turn were of the final generation of ITV wrestlers (Robbie Brookside, Doc Dean, Kid McCoy, Peter Bainbridge).  Jack Starz, Jordan Breaks, the Bryant Brothers etc are the next generation after Deano/Robbie Dynamite etc.

On the other side of the coin, someone like Will Opsrey/Pete Dunne etc is the successor to people like Alex Shane, Mark Haskins etc- people who were trained in the Americanised promotions and consequently are a good fit for modern American indie promotions.

(Incidentally, Doug Williams and Nigel McGuiness are in a halfway house as they come from the New School originally but can both work Old School fluently and can fit in nicely on All Star or Premier shows when booked on them.)

[Kadooboo]

Ospreay is admittedly not a good wrestler when it comes to psychology. But he truly does the "woke flippy bullshit" better than anyone else. I feel like watching an Ospreay match for a good story or psychology is like listening to Daft Punk for the lyrical content. I completely understand not enjoying his style of work as its not for everyone, but personally I adore the key jingling "woke" flippy no selling sequence slop bullshit that he brings to the table (at the right time, I'm not trying to see flips in a pure rules match)

[highflyflow]

53 minutes ago, Kadooboo said:

But he truly does the "woke flippy bullshit" better than anyone else

My thing is, and I do get this reaction, but I don’t even agree with this, really. I don’t really see Ospreay as on another level than high flyers like Rey, Sydal, Amazing Red, Ricochet, Liger, etc. I get the idea of engaging with something on its own terms, but it’s hard for me to give Ospreay a pass given the number of guys that wow me just as much from him from an athletic standpoint while rarely betraying the things I value most in watching wrestling.

[El McKell]

9 hours ago, Kadooboo said:

Ospreay is admittedly not a good wrestler when it comes to psychology. But he truly does the "woke flippy bullshit" better than anyone else. I feel like watching an Ospreay match for a good story or psychology is like listening to Daft Punk for the lyrical content.

It’s not 2017 anymore. Ospreay is above average at structuring a match to communicate a story to the audience and has been for years. Treating it like the lyrics to a Daft Punk song and ignoring it is doing yourself and Ospreay a disservice. Nobody who thinks Ospreay was the best wrestler in the world in 2022 or 2023 thinks that because he was the flippiest, because he actually wasnt. He has way more to offer.

Gonna stop the criticism to say I had never seen anyone call flips “woke” before and I think that’s pretty funny. Like woke just means anything old people don’t like

 

[Matt D]

On that note, I wrote about his match from last week.

——

AEW Dynamite 4/1/26 

Will Ospreay vs PAC 

MD: It's been a bit. Let's talk Ospreay vs PAC and Ospreay's selling. PAC ambushed Ospreay and his damaged neck before the bell with a brainbuster on the floor. Ospreay spent the rest of the match fighting back from that. The match was structured to build to a big comeback, have Ospreay nominally labored as he hit a bunch of his big moves (handsprings, springboards, a 450), for PAC to drop him on the floor a second time, with a second heat during a second commercial break, and then for Ospreay to come back, only to get jammed on his second comeback and have to sneak out a roll up win.

Overall his selling of the neck when he was taking a beating was fine, good even. You believed it. The guy has a great personal sense of what neck pain is and can channel it through his connection to the crowd and his earnestness about wanting to fight and wanting to wrestle. He deserves credit for that. 

And he even made an effort to sell while back on offense, generally between moves. He'd avoid something and end up on the apron before hitting something else and sell in the middle, and there's something to that. It's stronger selling while on offense than I'm used to out of him, even if only marginally.

The problem, so much as anything else, is conceptual. His movement when back on offense wasn't consummate to the amount of selling he was doing. The point of selling isn't to check boxes so people don't complain. It's to get fans to buy into the false reality being presented, not as real, but as important and worth caring about in a fictional sense, to immerse themselves in it. 

In this case, it's not even that I wanted him to sell more when doing a handspring or back somersault, if he was actually going to hit that stuff in the first place. How would that even work? I didn't want us to somehow zoom in on his wincing face or to have his body contort the wrong way midair. That's basically impossible. I get that. (Now him crumbling while attempting such a thing would have been a different story, but that's not even what I think would have been best here, maybe only once, because...).

It's that he shouldn't have been doing his usual offense in the first place. If you have a broken hand, you can't just punch people like it's nothing. That defeats the purpose of the selling of the broken hand of the first place. What's interesting in that scenario is to see the wrestler have to use his other hand, or at least have to be more cautious and careful with how he punches and choose the shots he takes smartly with a much higher strategic cost. That's when selling while back on offense stops being rote and starts becoming engrossing and makes for more complete, compelling stories. 

If he is going to go to the effort sell the neck as that damaged, it should be for a greater purpose than to excuse why PAC is controlling the match and why he's going to have to use a banana peel slip to win. The logical conclusion, what would make it balanced and consummate (and more interesting!) is that he can't do his normal vaulting and flipping and that he should have to find other ways to hurt PAC. Instead, he had his cake and ate it too, and so did the fans.

People will say toughness or adrenaline, and I get that. That's what lets him fight back in the first place. I get that people might see him as self-destructive and hurting himself more by doing this. Maybe even the match played out like that as his second comeback ultimately failed and he ended up in a Brutalizer. He couldn't use his superhuman offense to win as effectively as normal to win and had to rely on a roll up instead. But the story wasn't clear or crisp enough for that. Who knows it that was the intention? The dots weren't connected. They were barely dots in the first place. The performance and commentary didn't give us that. It gave us that PAC was too good during that finishing stretch, not that Ospreay was a half step slow and too stubborn to adapt.

It would have been more primal, more interesting, more simple and direct, if he had to find other ways to hurt PAC as opposed to hitting all of his normal stuff like it was no big deal and then selling in-between or after moves. It would have been a tighter, cleaner story relative to his selling. Did hitting all of his stuff pop the crowd? Yes. Did it create the same level of honest emotion of him having to find another way to fight back? I don't think so. 

It was denying people candy and then giving it to them instead of giving them something with more substance. It's okay to give the crowd candy sometimes. It's actually wonderful to deny them it and then make them earn it. That's one of the best ways to get heat in 2026 and it should be done far more, especially with Ospreay. But this story shouldn't have been about candy at all. This was PAC trying to injure Ospreay in front of a grudge match with Mox. You don't maximize the theme of the story you're trying to get the fans to buy into (through Will's otherwise very strong selling). 

Again, if this is some greater introspective arc about how Ospreay refuses to meet his new reality and find another way, maybe that's different, but the commentary didn't pick up on that, the match only half led there, and I just don't think that's the sort of story that Ospreay would want to tell or would even see the value in. Why would he when the crowd popped for all of his stuff anyway? What we ended up with instead was a lost opportunity, something that took us halfway down a thematic road, before veering us aside and trying to stumble back at the end. 

...Otherwise known as yet another Will Ospreay match that's spectacular in the moments but scrambled when it comes to the big picture. It's frustrating because he's so good in so many ways and because he gets close, he really does, but he, more than any wrestler I've ever seen (in part because the things he does excel at make the loudest noise when channeled erroneously) needs an editor to remind him to keep his eye on the ultimate goal at all times.