On Ospreay, the MJF Match, and Selling (with a bonus extra)

MD: I wasn't initially going to talk about this match here, so I figured I'd jot down some words before an all day training I had (I had seen the match on the bus on the way in). You guys who follow the blog know that this really is "a few words" relative to some of the stuff we post! So I thought I'd just take a screenshot as I am old and do not understand technology and post it in case anyone wanted to read it. But I guess the rest of the internet felt otherwise about it being a few words. Anyway, even though it went viral on Twitter for some crazy reason, I'm going to put it here for posterity and because this is my home to talk about wrestling (and because Eric told me to). For those who have already read it, I've got a call to action for the other participant at the end. You can skip to the last two paragraphs.

A few words about Ospreay's selling that I'll probably regret later. First and foremost, I appreciate the attempt that was made, I really do. There was huge effort to sell here. Good for him. Let's break it down though. Let's say that there are four different levels of selling. The first is in the moment. Something happens to you. You sell it. Then there's selling based on momentum. While your opponent is working on you, you continuously sell what's happening; that means between moves that are being done to you. The third is to sell between moves on your comeback. That is, you hit something clean, then you sell. That's the level that Ospreay, for the most part, reached in the long match with MJF. He'd hang on tight to that shoulder not just while he was moving around the ring but even while he was climbing to the top. I hate to say it, but it felt a little box-checking to me as opposed to being immersive. That's because there's a fourth level. That's total, immersive selling. I got the sense that Ospreay was having some trouble getting from Point A to Point B. I never, ever, felt like it was hindering his ability to actually do anything once he got to Point B. Some of that is his own natural athleticism, yes. This is going to sound crazy to some people, but for all of the creative opportunities Ospreay's preternatural athleticism provides him, it can be a hindrance when it comes to the art of pro wrestling. If he is so smooth and so clean and so crisp, it means that he has to find a way to introduce physical struggle to his execution when the narrative match calls for it. I'm loathe to invoke MMA, but it's a bit like having someone with trained and honed reflexes have to figure out how to work what they're doing in a way that suits pro wrestling and its needs. Down the stretch, his stuff should have seen more reckless and haphazard and clumsy. It's counterintuitive on some level, if you want to go out there and have the perfect match, but it's that last level of immersive selling: the idea that you're not just reacting in the margins but that there are no margins, that there is simply life and life's not treated you particularly well over the span of the match.

So why does this matter? Maybe it doesn't matter as much in 2024 when we're checking boxes on a scorecard and figuring out how many stars to give it based on that. Maybe it doesn't matter when the fans want to see people fight forever and just want an excuse to cheer (and brag) as opposed to having an excuse to let go and feel. But maybe it's a chicken and egg sort of thing too, most especially over time. Selling is by far the most important aspect of pro wrestling. Selling bestows meaning upon action. It shows the stakes. It creates the consequences. Selling is how a wrestler makes the crowd care; not cheer, not clap, not chant, but care. It is what allows for the suspension of disbelief. Selling composes the strands of the web that captures the hearts and minds of the crowd and prevents them from falling back into their own reality. Wrestling isn't about being real. It's about being immersive and consistent and holding up under its own weight. That means not just remembering how to check boxes and make sure you're doing something in the moment, or with momentum, or in the margins. It means that in every moment of the match, the price and the cost and the weight of what's happening is made to matter as much as humanly possible. It's maximizing the meaning of moments. Ospreay's athleticism may be a burden when it comes to this, but it's also a gift. Wrestling is about creating baselines and then pushing against them. If Ospreay's baseline is to be the most athletic person in the world, he can push against that, not just in the set up but in the execution as well and play against the expectations of the fans. There's another argument about how so much of the actual conflict in the match are counters and reversals as opposed to gritty struggle (there can be a balance), but that's another two paragraph rant for another day. One last bit of credit to give him at the end here: the times where he's most engaging to me, where he draws me in the most, aren't those times where he hits the craziest, most athletic, most impossible things. It's when you get the glimpse of a tiny wink or earnest smile, where you can tell he's absolutely tapped into the moment and not just hitting the next spot but instead living it. If he can figure out how to channel that same connection to the beating heart of pro wrestling to those times when the weight of the world is pressing down upon him, then maybe he'll really be one of the greatest one day and not someone whose greatest strengths are also his greatest weaknesses. 

So, what's next? I'm pretty sure it's Wembley. I bet it's a rematch. Maybe Garcia's All Out? I don't know. What I do know is that this was yet another match where Max felt the need to show the world that he could hang, that he was just as good and athletic as any other wrestler. We'd seen the Darby match. To me, that was overkill given his character. To me, that, if absolutely necessary, should have been the absolute end of it. It wasn't. The roster's full of guys that can go. They don't need another guy who can go for the sake of going. It's all about where Max can get, and at Wembley, I hope that he gets back to that other side of Piper, back to a modern take on the guy who had every single wrestling fan in the northeast wanting to absolutely kill him during the Snuka feud. 

That's the thing, though? How do you do it in 2024? Bloodying someone as well meaning and representative of wrestling (which is what AEW stands for) as Garcia is a good start. But at the end of the day, you have to take something from the fans. You have to wrong them, directly or indirectly. And what do modern fans want more than anything else? They want to be part of something special, to be able to brag that they were there for something you weren't. They want to be part of a match of the year, or night, or decade, and boy do those UK fans want that more than anyone else. They want to be part of that six star Ospreay experience. They've waited so long. They're entitled to it. They deserve it. So maybe it's not Roddy Piper that MJF ought to be shooting for at Wembley. Maybe it's Larry Zbyszko. We saw it in the Petit Prince matches where someone like Genele or Noced would grind Prince down for minutes upon minutes, cutting off hope spot after hope spot and escape after escape, bringing the fans to a wild froth so that when they finally got to see the athleticism unleashed, it meant so much more than if the whole match contained it. Maybe, just maybe, now that Max got this need to show he's as good as anyone out of his system, he can finally be truly great, withhold the gratification that they so desperately crave and that wrestling fans eat up like candy on a week in and week out basis, and cause an actual riot on the biggest show of the year. I'm not asking for much here, just everything that pro wrestling ought to be.