Will Ospreay

[Control21]

7 minutes ago, fxnj said:

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.

I see a lot of comments to that degree on Twitter or the Discord channels I visit. 

[donsem43]

He's the Mary Sue of pro wrestling to a fault.

[Kadaveri]

12 hours ago, InYourCase said:

I don't particularly like Hiroshi Hase or Yoshiaki Fujiwara, but I vote for them, because they are overwhelmingly great.

Dude if you don't like a wrestler don't put them in your Top 100 Ever list.

And I'm gonna use that as a jumping off point because I've never experienced the feeling that I'm being peer-pressured by some astroturfing campaign into saying a wrestler is "objectively" great like with Will Ospreay the last year or so. It's really quite weird. I've actually seen him live many many times in 2013-16 when he was a regular on the UK indies and I can't remember ever having strong feelings about him. He was just a guy. If people enjoy his style of wrestling then more power to them but it's not something that interests me at all. To me his kayfabe character is "guy who is phenomenally great at every aspect of wrestling" (I wonder if that makes people think he's actually that in real life), like you've put in a cheat code to give your video game character maxed out stats on everything. It all feels aimed at people who mainly appreciate the most surface elements of pro-wrestling (e.g. athleticism and moves) which most obviously require "real" skill to uninitiated eyes, but there's no pro-wrestling soul to any of it. He's like the culmination of "sports entertainment" over pro-wrestling. I don't believe in any of it. The comparisons with Misawa feel bizarre to me as I simply cannot imagine ever believing in a Will Ospreay comeback the way I get sucked into e.g. Misawa's big comeback against Taue 4/15/95. Misawa has a certain level of vulnerability and determination to struggle against the odds that Ospreay can't convey because nothing ever really affects him. I don't hate it, there are a bunch of Will Ospreay matches I thought were really good, but the overall package is a bit boring and uninspired to me.

[Makai Club #1]

Ospreay is pretty great but he's layerless. Goes one speed, does his thing regardless of opponent and it either clicks or it doesn't. Compares to the true all time greats, with the exception of maybe Flair, they all are much more varied and layered in what they have to offer. 

 

Ospreay is about as good as you can get for someone who doesn't emotionally move me. But there are plenty that I think are better and do move me when I'm watching them. And that's what this is about. If there is any mention of objectivity when it comes to wrestling, you've adopted the wrong mindset already.

[Matt D]

Do we think he could work a blindfold match? 

[Jetlag]

I think guys like him really suffer from the overhype. Like, with the kind of praise that is getting heaped on him, I expect to see some seriously mindblowing shit, and instead I get tornado DDTs and spanish flys which every indy guy is doing now. Like yeah he is decently spectacular, but doesn't really stand up to someone like Rey Jr in the 90s or Le Petit Prince, or even the likes of Jerry Lynn and RVD. Also since I've seen French Catch I'm not very impressed by the fact that all his matches are insanely long. Pudgy bald guys like Angelito could do better exchanges over similiar timespans. All that and the fact he doesn't really excel through storytelling or selling makes me have zero interest in watching him.

[Tetsujin]

I agree that Ospreay mostly works much better as a babyface, never liked his heel run in New Japan for example. But you all guys need to check his G1 match against Taichi last year. It's absolutely incredible how good ol Wil Ospreay works that match, he totally controls the pace by restraining himself and he somehow makes his style work as a bullying method against Taichi, who feels like the biggest underdog in the world. It's probably the most unique Ospreay match ever.

[Tawren]

On 4/23/2024 at 12:51 PM, Matt D said:

Do we think he could work a blindfold match? 

I think a more interesting question is what would his blindfold matches look like. I can see him doing an interesting comedy match vs a Don Callis. I'd love to see him and Danielson or Moxley in one. Very unlikely to happen though!

 

Ospreay will probably be in my top 25, maybe a bit higher. He has so many high end classics like the G1 final vs Naito and the Omega matches. Strong depth of ****+. Great flyer and a good theme song. I don't think I'll be the highest voter.

[squidlad]

On 4/23/2024 at 1:28 AM, InYourCase said:

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. 

in my opinion, 'limb selling' is one of the most overrated talking points in our particular corner of match reviews. I think some reviewers latched on to it because it's the most visually obvious aspect of psychology and took it far more seriously than wrestlers themselves. Name a 'great' wrestler and I can find you an example of them 'blowing off limb selling'. Everyone does it but for some reason a few get unfairly penalized for it. It's a writing crutch and I think it would be beneficial for reviewers who've been overly focused on 'limb selling' to put it out of their minds for a while and find other things to critique. Really, just try it out as an experiment. I've read too many reviews that are along the lines of 'this was good, that was good but he didn't sell the leg. F.' and It's unsatisying to me as a reader. I speak from experience because I had this exact problem a number of years ago. I was obsessing about selling the arm and selling the leg, while ignoring the myriad of other things that are crucial for actually getting a live crowd into a match. Once I trained myself out of this habit, I was able to develop new appreciations for things that occur in a match.

[highflyflow]

3 hours ago, squidlad said:

Name a 'great' wrestler and I can find you an example of them 'blowing off limb selling'. Everyone does it but for some reason a few get unfairly penalized for it.

Do these few get unfairly penalized for it, or are they just guilty of it to an extraordinarily higher level than the wrestlers they’re being compared to?

 

[El McKell]

I bet if we looked into it the people who do it the most are just going to be 90s NJPW juniors and 10s NJPW wrestlers. That’s it’s just about differences in the style rather than actual mentality of the wrestlers. A place and time where the expectation is begin slow and end spectacular just causes blowing off limbwork 

[DMJ]

I have Ospreay on my list currently and I don't see him leaving, though he's not necessarily ranked all that high. He's hovering in the 80s right now.

I'm a very US-centric, WWE/WCW 80s-to-today viewer, though. That's what I've seen. That's what I know. Those are the storylines I'm familiar with.

It makes my ballot look goofy at times because while I've been watching more and more AJPW from the 90s and lucha stuff and other things, I'm watching "random" matches void of any context. So, yeah, I just watched Misawa vs. Taue and I dug it, but I had to do some post-viewing research to even understand why Taue going after Misawa's eye was brilliant rather than just your standard great heel work. There are layers to these matches I'm completely missing. 

But that's also why I think Ospreay is that good. You can go into his matches cold and he's still doing something "cutting edge" in almost every match. Sure, if you scour the indies and are super knowledgeable of that realm, Ospreay's innovative sequences might not seem all that innovative. But, to me, he's stupendous. I wouldn't quite put him up there with Rey or AJ Styles (who, in TNA, was also basically doing at least one sequence or counter or high spot that would blow your mind in nearly every single high-profile match), but damn, Ospreay's ability to blow people's minds in 2024 is almost more impressive because the envelope has been pushed so very far. 

If you hate this style, you're not going to see an Ospreay match that will change your outlook. It is undeniably a "performance." It is undeniably "showy." To be honest, it is not my preferred genre of wrestling. But, within its genre, he is at the pinnacle.

I'd much rather watch an Ospreay match, willfully going into it expecting to be blown away by a bunch of convoluted spots designed for the sole purpose of "popping" the crowd, than, say, watch a Seth Rollins match where he'll try to do the same thing but get nowhere close because (a) his offense isn't nearly as exciting and (b) if you're going to just not sell, its almost better to just not sell the whole match. Ospreay is a maximalist and, if you're going to be that, if you're just going to do superhero wrestling where almost nothing matters because everything is going to get a 2.9 count, well, you have to really, really blow the audience away with your stuff. If its going to be a fireworks show, you can't have any misfires. Ospreay does it better than anyone else I've seen in the past decade. 

 

[Boss Rock]

1 hour ago, DMJ said:

I'd much rather watch an Ospreay match, willfully going into it expecting to be blown away by a bunch of convoluted spots designed for the sole purpose of "popping" the crowd, than, say, watch a Seth Rollins match where he'll try to do the same thing but get nowhere close because (a) his offense isn't nearly as exciting and (b) if you're going to just not sell, its almost better to just not sell the whole match. Ospreay is a maximalist and, if you're going to be that, if you're just going to do superhero wrestling where almost nothing matters because everything is going to get a 2.9 count, well, you have to really, really blow the audience away with your stuff. If its going to be a fireworks show, you can't have any misfires. Ospreay does it better than anyone else I've seen in the past decade. 

 

Pretty much sums up where I'm at with him. I honestly think he's been one of the best in the world for at least the last 5 years if not longer. It's totally a style I get people hating, but I more often than not impressed by what he can do and the consistency to which he can pull it off.

[Microstatistics]

To me, Ospreay seems to be a case of high-end performance vs. generic outing. Criticism of his selling is overstated and even fallacious if you look at his best work but appears to sustain if you examine his average spotfest. 

In some ways, he epitomizes some of my most despised elements of modern wrestling, namely 1) the perennial back-and-forth segments that have usurped proper transitional segments 2) introducing a lot of ideas into a match but not following through on any of them. The Danielson match was an egregious example of the latter, though Bryan was almost as guilty. Will's strikes are stiff and his athleticism undeniable but most of the rest of his offense is not particularly interesting either.

Having said that, he is one of the best in the world when he is working from underneath against a belligerent heel and his three top MOTYC-level matches all embody that:

vs. Shingo Takagi (NJPW, 6/5/2019)

vs. Kenny Omega (NJPW, 1/4/2023)

vs. Kyle Fletcher (AEW, 11/23/2024)

Maybe the WK match was more of a Kenny clinic (though Ospreay's selling in it was pretty fantastic) but I have yet to see a better Shingo match and Full Gear was almost certainly Fletcher's career match. As a result, despite the limiting flaws, I'll consider him for the Top 50 due to my penchant for tippy-top performances/matches (particularly against wrestlers who haven't hit the highest level against anyone else).