Will Ospreay is 12

AEW Dynamite 4/17/26

Will Ospreay vs Hechicero

(The fictional character of) Will Ospreay is very, very dumb. 

And that's okay. It fits classic archetypes, the simple, quirky, strong hero with the good heart who can't bear to see injustice done around him. Li'l Abner. Andy Griffith's character in No Time for Sergeants. Maybe Tom Brown in Tom Brown's Schooldays if we want to go the UK route. The gentle giant. The stalwart knight. Galahad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Gourry in Slayers, to talk about old anime because I don't know any new anime (Goku works, maybe? Everyone knows Goku. He seems dumber than Goku; Luffy? That works, right?). It's an archetype. Pure of heart; so pure that he's not all that bright, for knowledge corrupts and all that. 

The character of Will Ospreay is a basically well-meaning dog who is going to bite at his wound and needs a collar of shame. He is stubborn. He is prideful. He is absolutely assured of his own ability. 

Maybe it's not just okay. Maybe it actually fits the moment we live in. There has been recent  social commentary about how everyone's a twelve year old boy now. The US has a Department of War and argues about the Gulf of America. Hollywood properties are all superhero movies and nostalgic remakes. 

The viral post on bluesky from "Patrick Cosmos" introducing the concept was as follows:

"I'm strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm" of course you do. You're twelve. "I don't want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal" hell yeah homie you're twelve. "Maybe if there's crime we should just send the army" bless your heart my twelve year old buddy."

And... that's perfect for the character of Will Ospreay, right? He's big, dumb, does flips, is going to slam that round peg into the square hole until it fits, dammit. Because he's that determined and that stalwart and that sure of himself. If you do him wrong, he will be hurt and very angry about it, and will punch you, and kick you, and do a back flip at you and look very angry as he does it. If you hurt him, he will be hurt, and sell the hurt, and then hit all of his stuff perfectly, really focusing, really getting it done, and then it will really hurt him, because it was dumb, and he shouldn't have done it that way, but it’s the only way he knows how so he’s not going to let that stop him.

He's a perfect pro wrestling character for our time. 

And this is the lens you have to understand literally everything he does, all of his matches. It's the only way his matches make any coherent, logical sense. They fall apart under carefully examination otherwise. Trust me, I’ve tried. With the lens though… He's Dudley Do-Right. He's George of the Jungle. He's stronger than the average wrestler, faster, slicker, more agile, more resilient, far, far more stubborn. 

His weakness, so much as he has any weakness, is that he is so, so very dumb and stubborn. 

We've not dealt with any sort of wrestling character like this since maybe Henry Godwinn? Hillbilly Jim? Maybe Festus? He's basically playing the classic US country bumpkin but instead he's an Assassin's Creed cloak wearing 12-year old who represents modernity in ways that hit the zeitgeist perfectly.

There will be logic and causality in his matches but it's never going to be the most satisfying when it comes to build and payoff, clear and clean transitions, clean act breaks (Storytelling). Because he's too dumb a character for any of that; he's too stubborn. He's going to run his head into the wall again and again and you can't tell Go Dog Go in that scenario let alone Shakespeare. But that doesn't mean that what you end up seeing isn't exciting, like a fireworks display is exciting, and like fireworks displays, even if the build isn't necessarily there, there's probably going to be a grand finale. 

Just remember at all times that this character is a blistering moron with a heart of gold, and you'll find your way through the jungle of great spots and exciting sequences and absolutely broken causality that starts right before he does something and doesn’t start back up until after. Because he's going to hit you with his broken hand. He'll sell it beforehand and he will sell it afterwards, but he's going to hit you with it anyway, damn it, because he is Will Ospreay, bruv, and because he can. Don’t tell Picasso how to paint, and don’t tell Will Ospreay he can’t punch someone with his broken hand. 

So, with that lens established, here he faced Hechicero. It's a little like super competent bad guys trying to fight Inspector Gadget or Maxwell Smart, right? You can use the best techniques and the best traps, but Ospreay's going to stick that peg into that hole anyway, no matter the shape, and there’s virtually nothing you can do to stop him. 

Instead of going high to start, Hechicero went low, pulling a leg, scoring a takedown, tying Ospreay up. There were a hundred ways for Ospreay to potentially escape; he wasn’t even all that far from the ropes. But no, he had to do a headstand and use a toupie style twisting escape, damaging his own heavily taped neck right from the get go. Because he is a stubborn moron. You get the sense he KNEW it was going to hurt his neck and he did it anyway, just to prove that he could. 

Ospreay, now angry and wanting to get back at Hechicero, eye for an eye style like any good 12 year old, went for one of his legs. Hechicero stepped over, took Will down. Will tried to counter a couple of times, but ended up tied up in a knot again for his trouble. Will finally got out and put on a side headlock takeover, confident, sure of himself, needing to show everyone he was just as good as one of the best technical wrestlers in the world. Hechicero immediately turned it into a headscissors and again, instead of prying the legs open or getting out any other way, Will just had to bridge up and hop around him before vaulting to his feet. He immediately sold his neck. Of course he did. He stupidly hurt it getting out of the hold. Hechicero hadn’t even targeted the neck yet! He was targeting everything else, maybe most of all Ospreay’s 12-year old pride, and then Will was doing all the work for him!

Then, finally, Hechicero started in on the head with a dropkick and a few strikes. Will, seeing red once more, hit a clutch ‘rana to take him over. That made everything fun for him again. He stomped about, hyped up the crowd, and hit a dive. That hurt (he rubbed his shoulder), and he started in with some good old fashioned fisticuffs instead. This was the smartest thing he’d done so far and the lad should be lauded for it. Hechicero tried to fire back but to no avail. Instead of showing off or outwrestling him, Will gave him the what for, stiff upper lip entirely focused on beating Hechicero around the ringside area and then back into the ring. That included a ten punch in the corner, great fun that almost cost him, as Hechicero slipped out. 

Will was able to ping Hechicero with a spin wheel kick though (not sure if that hurt the shoulder since he didn’t sell it), and then went right into a figure four lock of all things. Why that? If you ask me, it was to get back at those leg submissions from before, combined with the animal instinct to keep his head away from Hechicero. Most of all though, it let him look Hechicero in the eyes, let him stare right at him and say “Ha, I got you now, Bruv. Who’s the mat specialist?” Pure id. Hechicero tried a few things but went to the ropes before long, a sensible move from a sensible rudo.

Will stayed on the leg, but quickly got distracted by Marina Shafir sitting in the crowd, allowing Hechicero to come back, and after a few reversal attempts (Ospreay seeming perfectly fine throughout), Hechicero was able to hit the conjuro spinning backbreaker followed up by a step up knee to the back of the head in the corner. Nasty stuff. Hechicero followed it up, tactician that he is, by working the leg up to the shoulder, to finally unlock the neck with a twisting crank of his feet. He was basking in it now, feeling momentum and his own thrill of victory, as he skillfully locked in la tapitia. Will grimaced as Hechicero yanked his hair in the hold, his visage becoming more teeth than face as his neck was pulled back. 

Hechicero moved in for the kill, tossing Will against the ropes once more. It was the worst thing he could do. Any normal, reasonable human being would have bounced back, ducked, hit a clothesline, jumping knee, big boot, anything that wouldn’t hurt himself as well when it absolutely wasn’t necessary. Those were things that Hechicero might expect, might plan for, might be ready to counter. But no, good ol’ Will wasn’t going to do that. Instead he went right onto his head again, bouncing off the ropes with a handspring and hit a flipping kick. You can’t defend against stupidity. The greatest chess master sometimes has more to fear from someone who doesn’t know the rules of the game. 

Ospreay continued on with a springboard elbow (wincing on impact) and a standing sky twister press. That led to Callis and Danielson getting ahead of me and this review and going on about just how dumb Will is, a rare point of agreement between the two. Still, Ospreay pressed his advantage and even though Hechicero fought back, Will was primed, ready to unleash the Hidden Blade. Just not as ready as Hechicero was. Hechicero caught him on the charge with one of his finishers, the twisting headscissors legdrop. That would have been, to any normal person, the end of the match. To Ospreay, dumb but preternaturally tough and resilient, that meant that he actually had to put his foot on the rope to beat the count on a pin. No small thing for such a superheroic figure.

That drew the doctor in to check on him. Will wouldn’t quit, wouldn’t stop. He’d done nothing but take neck damage since he returned from surgery, but he couldn’t even imagine such an eventuality. He can’t even spell “eventuality.” So Hechicero dropped him throat first on the rail. Still, even after the Doctor checked on him more, he refused to throw in the towel. That’s not something to hold against him. Most babyfaces wouldn’t. It’s not exactly the same as doing a headstand when you didn’t need to. Still, it’s consistent; it’s all consistent! That’s the point!

But now, as they came back from their second commercial break, Hechicero had Will in real danger. He had him draped over the rope, yanking on the neck. Will got free and immediately charged right at Hechicero only to get tripped and go sailing over the top. Oh Will. Hechicero hit a dive of his own and followed it up with his diving elbow to a standing opponent but to the back of Will’s head. Again, brutal stuff. 

But it didn’t matter, because in this world that we’re stuck in, you don’t have to be smart. You just have to be incessant. If you don’t give up, and you don’t admit fault, and you just keep on tweeting through it, well… eventually things will go your way. That’s exactly what Will did and as Hechicero went for a suplex, Will turned it into a Stundog Millionaire. He used the distance that earned him to charge at Hechicero (of course he did) and ran right into a foot (of course he did). But he kept the pressure on and caught Hechicero over his shoulder. This time the shoulder gave way. Hechicero went for a small package. Ospreay was able to turn it over and then (again going tit for tat, anything you can do I can do better, in 12 year old fashion) went for a backslide of his own.

That didn’t work and neither did his attempt at the Oscutter, shoulder generally fine for it, by the way; it was just that Hechicero caught him. Hech followed it by turning another pin attempt into his vaulting rear naked choke, but here, maybe the great tactician overthought things and should have just kept it simple himself. He figured Ospreay would be ready for it and turned it into a cross armbreaker. Ospreay was able to tough it out (neck and all) and shove that round hole into the square peg once and for all, lifting him up for a Styles Clash and hitting the Hidden Blade for the pin and the win.

And I have to admit, having this lens in mind, the idea that the kayfabe character of Will Ospreay is a nigh-invulnerable, super powerful, ridiculously athletic blistering idiot meant that a lot of the narrative issues I would have had with the match could be brushed over. That doesn’t mean the drama was really maximized, though I think they got it closer than usual. It does mean that you could draw a throughline from beginning to end. Some side missions like the figure-four that didn’t really have any impact in the match over all? Well that was Will just being a petty idiot. Him doing handsprings perfectly and only selling after the fact? A stubborn idiot. The endless times he just charged into something? Well, that’s just Will, innit? And in the end, Hechicero found himself playing chess against someone playing checkers and instead of taking his king, got crowned on top of his head for his trouble. 

Dudley Do-Right has caught his man. George of the Jungle stopped the poachers. Goku vanquished the … evil Saiyans trying to invade earth? Peace is restored to the land. And thankfully, because everyone is twelve, no one even had to think too hard about it (except for me, I guess), and no one (not even me) even had to learn a moral lesson.

So there we have it. After 54 five star matches from the Observer, moral lesson or no, I think I’ve finally figured out the perfect framework to watch and appreciate Will Ospreay matches. And now, like anyone who stares at a Picasso painting for too long, I have a headache.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends?) 3/30 - 4/5 - Part 1

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. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/16 - 12/22 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 12/18/24

Will Ospreay vs Darby Allin

MD: It was breathtaking, mindblowing even. They had jockeyed for position, to see who would be able to hit a top rope move onto the other. Ospreay gained the advantage. He flipped and twisted and landed on his feet as Darby moved. He was believably staggered from the effort though and Darby rushed forth to lock in and hit the Code Red. Ospreay shifted his weight and flipped him back over. Now Darby was staggered and completely open for a hidden blade. Ospreay butterflied Darby for the Stormbreaker, lifted him up, hefted him over, and Darby continued the momentum hitting a Code Red. Unquestionably amazing sequence, maybe one of the most impressive and spectacular in AEW history.

Work with me for a few minutes here and imagine a world where the match ended there.

Up until that point, it had been excellent. Darby tried to contain and frustrate Ospreay early with a headlock but to no avail. They had an answer for one another during that opening feeling out process but Ospreay liked the answers more than Darby did, maybe. That's why Darby went big early, wanting that Coffin Drop bad, too bad, and choosing to go for it long before Ospreay was softened up. He wiped out hard on the corner of the apron.

And that's the magic of Darby Allin, isn't it? When the car crashes, you can't look away. Ospreay couldn't look away. The human underneath all the moves and spots and counters burst through and disbelief came over his face. If Ospreay's going to feel that way about what happened, the fans, already inclined in that direction anyway, will feel it double.

Darby had already been selling little things during that opening stretch, a side effect of using his own body so effectively (but not efficiently) as his primary weapon, and now every movement was portrayed as agonizing. Ospreay, momentum on his mind, took the role of the aggressor. Instead of rushing straight from one counter-laden sequence to the next, Darby had to work from underneath and create hope wherever he could manage it. All of that built to the sequence in the corner culminating with the Code Red.

It would have been enough. This is going to sound counter-intuitive but it would have been better, neater, cleaner, satisfying, incredibly satisfying, but still leaving a lot on the table for whenever their next match might be.

Instead they cycled through everything you might expect, even if you wouldn't know the details. The fighting spirit strikes had them hanging on to one another. The big spot was a Styles Clash to the floor. The actual finish had Darby push through it all to hit a couple of Coffin Drops. It was fine but felt like noise after the height they had just hit.

The Code Red had served as the gateway to the last third of the match, a transition towards an extended finishing stretch, when it could have been an exclamation point on the match that people would have been talking about for months. Now it's a nice gif and bit of a highlight reel but people had already moved on to the Styles Clash by the end of the match.

If the match had ended with the Code Red, I bet it'd have gotten a half star less in the Observer than it ultimately will get. But past Dave, not a single person would have been disappointed. It was a great taste of a dream match, more than a taste, a meal, a better meal than the overgorging spectacle we got in the end. It would have been doubly successful for leaving so much on the table and protecting Ospreay as it would have been a banana peel finish of sorts. It had been a complete narrative package, more complete than with the extraneous bits tacked on at the end.

Less can be more, especially when less is so unique and so dynamic and already so much in and of itself. Bigger isn't necessarily better. A match's quality isn't based on how full of stuff it is, even if that's currently the only way to break the 5* WON barrier. There are more important barriers to break; immersion and emotional engagement are more important than elation and fans drunk off of spectacle. There's a better balance to be struck. I really do believe that.

-----

Ospreay made a very gracious and grateful post this last week. In it, he asked for feedback. I doubt he's ever going to see this but my advice to him would be to ground his obvious greatness in the fictional reality of pro wrestling.

There is a Ric Flair mentality that the fans deserve to see every spot in every match because that's how he felt when he was watching Ray Stevens. I see it a little like a concert from someone with a hundred great, classic songs. The ten you get will be different than the ten someone else may have gotten but you appreciate those ten all the more because nothing is assured and because you got some others didn't, even if they got some you didn't. If everyone gets everything all the time, then there's less reason to appreciate any single thing.

I liked Ospreay's early AEW promos. gracious, focused, human. He wanted to raise his family while doing what he loved. AEW was letting him do that. Where he frustrates me is when he mentions performing for the fans. Yes, a basketball player can perform well, but in wrestling, it's best to avoid those blurred lines. The worst example of this is when he called out MJF for having bad matches and said Tony called him to save the show. There was a way to say something similar and implying that MJF's attitude of taking the easy road and cheating was robbing the fans of the champion they should see. Ospreay, instead, could have noted that he was going to push anyone that faced him to their absolute limit. If they could step up and even come close to beating him, the fans would  get their money's worth. It was saying the same thing but in a way that made sense in the fictional world of pro wrestling.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/19 - 8/25 Part 3

MD: I don't have a lot to say about the Coffin Match. In some ways it was weirdly minimalist in not a lot happened but everything that did happen was monumental, but ultimately a bit too much DID happen overall for me to say that. Also not a lot to say about the Dustin 10-man. It was really just a finishing stretch with a bit of prelude. I did want to double back to some other things however.

AEW Collision 8/24/24

Big Bill vs. Hook

MD: Part of the joy of pro wrestling is that that it is interactive. It's live television, sure, but it's live television in front of a crowd, where the crowd can be conditioned, can be manipulated, but cannot be completely controlled. Nine times out of ten, when the crowd loses control, it's to the detriment of the match. In those situations, it's also usually due to some miscalculation in the match itself. But wrestling, at its best, is at least partially improvisational, and an out of control crowd is a possibility to live in the moment and create something special.

Hook's rarely, if ever been in a situation like this, but Bill's pushing 40 and is a fifteen year vet. There was a miscalculation here. I won't go too deep into the angle itself, but it's problematic at best and everyone knows it. Leaning into the fact it's problematic only partially mitigates the problem. In some ways, it makes it worse. This match was set up to protect Bill and to make Hook work from underneath to overcome a much larger opponent and look all the better in victory. It was meant to chip away at him on the heels of a big return so that the angle could be heated up and both he and Jericho could claim momentum coming into All In.

A couple of problems. One, the crowd wanted to cheer for Bill anyway. He's larger than life, charismatic; people have fond memories of him. Two, the match was set up for Hook to charge in early and maybe get a shot or two in from underneath or to have Keith attack him when the ref was distracted so that the odds were against him and you could explain away him not firing back more. It was all to build first for him to hit a suplex on Bill (and on Keith to take him out) and then for the Redrum to finish it. Basically, Bill was taking not a majority of this, but 95% of it. It's almost impossible to get behind a babyface who isn't constantly fighting back, even if he's cut off. Against the right opponent and in front of the right crowd, that's fine. This was neither. And the fact of the matter is that it's not all that novel to see Hook suplex Bill. We've seen it before, not just here but in previous feuds and it's not like Hook has even had that many feuds. So it went from 50-50 support for Bill and Hook to 60-40, to 70-30, to an overwhelming tidal wive as the match went on.

So Bill had this incredible crowd to deal with, one that was going to cheer whatever he did, and he went all the way with it. He yelled at them that they couldn't support him now when they never had before. He gave every hand motion imaginable to every corner of the ring. He crossed his arms to look as dorky as goofy as possible and stomped around. He leaned hard into his offense in the meanest and most unfair and conniving ways. Nothing worked, but he justified all of it with the effort. He had posed and preened and bounced a bit at the start, just a bit of cool heel trappings, but when he realized the damage that caused, he went as far from it as possible. None of it did Hook any favors, but thanks to Bill making it seem like the adulation was the absolute worst thing in the world, it probably didn't do him any longterm harm. And then he worked it all into the finish by playing to them and turning around between chops while Hook was on the top rope so he could get caught in the Redrum. People may look at this as a failure, but I see it as Bill masterfully averting disaster. All of this now going to be there, potential energy to be tapped into when the time is right. The time just wasn't last week.

Jeff Jarrett vs. Ariya Daivari

MD: And sometimes everything goes exactly how it's supposed to. This was the same exact crowd, only one segment later, and it went perfectly. It was such simple stuff, Daivari posing in the corner to boos, Jarrett to cheers. It was Daivari doing the strut repeatedly as he got the better of Jarrett only for Jarrett to clock him, then Jarrett teasing it but unable to do it until the final comeback. It was Jarrett counting along with Aubrey and the crowd while Daivari stalled and stooged outside the ring. It was Daivari menacing Karen to distract Jarrett so he could take over and then later Jarrett getting cut off because he checked on her. It was Jarrett working from underneath in a sleeper so the crowd could get behind him and throwing punches that the fans could chant along to. And all the while, there were the tiny bits of connective tissue to ensure everything made sense and was timed and placed perfectly. The crowd just wanted to be involved. They wanted something to get behind. They wanted to feel like they were part of it all. The Hook match wasn't set up to give them that. The Jarrett match absolutely was. Pro wrestling can be fascinating when it goes wrong, but man is it ever beautiful when it goes right. 

AEW All In 8/25/24

MJF vs. Will Ospreay

MD: I'm not disappointed in Ospreay.

I'm not even disappointed in Max, not really. Maybe a little.

Mostly? Mostly I'm just disappointed in myself.

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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.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/15 - 4/21

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Will Ospreay

MD: I've had RVD on my mind lately. They used him on the 4/20 Rampage. I haven't gotten to that yet. There's been a lot of wrestling to watch and I only caught the back half of Rampage so far because it more directly led into the PPV. I'll go back for it and for Yuka vs Emi because it sounds like an amazing Emi performance in difficult circumstances. When I think about RVD, though, I think about his PPV match with Benoit. I haven't rewatched it in decades and I have no desire to now, so bear with my memories. You have to understand what it was like to be a fan on the internet in the late 90s and early 00s. Benoit wasn't just a wrestler. He was a representation of a counterculture, of a certain sort of identity. He was put up on a pedestal. We put him there. He represented everything we thought we wanted wrestling to be; if wrestling was just that, we would feel good about ourselves for being fans of it. The match, as I remember it, was a disaster. Benoit did what he generally was supposed to, worked over a body part for the entirety of the heat. RVD no sold it on his comeback. Of course he did. We were furious. At the time, we blamed RVD. Twenty years later, it's obvious that the blame should go to Benoit for structuring a match that not only RVD wouldn't play along with, but that, if he had, would have actively blunted what made him special.

To some degree, that was Danielson's challenge here. The "dream match" portion of Danielson vs Ospreay was always going to be the high octane back-third: the counters, the finishing stretch, and harnessing Ospreay's physicality and athleticism in ways that only Danielson's mind could devise that would play into the weight of the crowd's expectations and the importance of Bryan Danielson in history and in people's hearts. While it might make sense strategically in character to target Ospreay's leg, it would have kneecapped the match and frustrated people one way or the other; either he would have dropped the selling (believably or not, probably not) or he would have sold and worked the finishing stretch at half speed leaving people who wanted the full Ospreay experience disappointed. So they built it by targeting the side instead. The announcers mentioned ribs or the liver, but to me, it was purely a wind issue. Danielson caught him as he was coming off the top with a kick. It took the wind out of Ospreay. Danielson was therefore able to control and contain and focus the middle section of the match, using gut shots to open up Ospreay's face, prying at the legs or twisting the fingers, but doing overall damage instead of limiting Ospreay's motion. When he recovered, it was a matter of timing and opportunity, of recovering his wind because of a lucky, skillful shot or two or some amazing feat of agility like landing on his feet out of the top rope 'rana. Then, later on, Danielson honed in on the arm, in part to set up the LeBell lock. It's easier for Ospreay to limit his upper body motion than his lower body motion and he adapted accordingly. He dropped it for a bit when it did no harm to the narrative and brought it back in a key moment when it could help it. I saw early criticism of the match attack his selling, but I didn't see it. It worked for me, but it worked primarily because it was set up to go with the flow and to not limit him in the ways that mattered for the expectations of the match while still allowing Danielson to be in control and the match to have shape and form. Danielson worked to Ospreay's strengths and minimized his weaknesses. 

What was far, far harder to work with was this crowd. When you see even the most excited crowd, a crowd that is buzzing and chanting away, they usually react to the actual action in the ring. That's true even in the early stages of matches. A clean break will garner applause. A slap instead will give you either boos or oohs. A wrenching hold will draw one reaction when it's put on and another when it's escaped, and then back to the chanting and buzzing they'll go. The "This is Awesome" or "AEW" or "Both These Guys" chants will come at the end of a sequence during the standoff. That wasn't at all the case here. These two were feeling one another out in front of the loudest vacuum I'd ever seen. They would chant whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, even and especially over meaningful emotional beats. This crowd was drunk on the idea of a dream match regardless of what was occurring. They were celebrating the finishing third before the match had even begun. It didn't get better even once they got going. Danielson took a nasty bump off an apron exchange and they were setting up Ospreay hitting a hidden blade from the apron to the floor while Bryce was trying to steady him. It was hugely important to the overall story of the match given the eventual finish. Meanwhile, the fans were chanting "We're Not Worthy!" For the first two-thirds of the match, the crowd was unquestionably excited, but the wrestlers didn't have the crowd. Whatever they were doing, no matter how good it was, no matter how smartly it was put together to be the best of the both of them combined, to be better than the sum of their parts, it wasn't compelling enough to guide and control a crowd that was there so that it could have bragging rights about seeing one of the best matches ever. It wasn't a case of looking to the back for the entire match waiting for a run-in; instead it was looking to the future, to that last third, and taking for granted what was actually happening.

And, of course, that last third was absolutely excellent. If the first two-thirds were, in part, to minimize Ospreay's weakness, that last third completely highlighted his strengths. Danielson was able to push himself up to new heights for specific spots by pressing off against Ospreay's athleticism. Things like the Mistica LeBell lock or the top rope Tiger Suplex or the Busaiku Knee counter to the Oscutter were out of this world and stand up to any spot in any Danielson match ever. By that point, the fans were completely tuned in. I'm not sure we've ever quite heard the "Yes-No" chants as they manifested here and they were just the soundtrack the last third of the match called for. Then there was the finish, which to me was absolutely perfect. At the end of the day, that's how the match had been presented: Danielson was a legend but Ospreay was younger, faster, hungrier. So at high noon, after a war that neither man had been able to win, they had an old fashioned standoff. Ospreay, with his Assassin's Creed trappings, is perfect for this sort of over-the-top theatricality. We get endless strike exchanges and fighting spirit bits in wrestling, but this wasn't even a samurai showdown where both fighters would pass and one would fall after the fact; no, it was right out of a western with the younger upstart having the quicker draw. Given what the match meant to accomplish, the passing of a torch, it was the perfect ending. Maybe, just maybe, it was even the perfect match too. It was, unfortunately, just one that couldn't overcome the frothing anticipation that the fans in the arena had for it. It was their loss and ultimately it was ours too. 

AEW Collision 4/20/24

BUNKHOUSE BRAWL

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs. Kyle Fletcher/Konosuke Takeshita

MD: On a nexus with Connelly vs. Demus on one end and the Jarrett vs. Briscoe in the Concession Stand Brawl on the other, this would be in the middle but definitely closer to the former than the latter. I write a lot about my own personal preference for wrestling that feels organic and where you can't see the strings and that's much more of what we had here. There were numerous moments in this one where someone (more often a member of the BCC or Takeshita) would spot something in the corner of their eye and work it into the match. That's not to say that Fletcher didn't put up a good effort; he did, it's just that this probably was a lot less natural to him both from what he had seen and what he had done. You had Claudio picking up action figures or spotting a hammer (used previously) on the ground and making use of it. I do think that Fletcher has some good natural instincts in working the crowd but this wasn't the sort of match to do that in the way one usually did it. Takeshita, on the other hand, is someone who drives me absolutely nuts with his match layout: too much, too soon, all at once. But the reason why he drives me nuts is because he's so physically impressive and visually effective, dynamic and explosive. If he could just get out of his own way, he could be absolutely amazing. Here, he understood the mission, a constant violent push forward. 

I also talk a lot about the duel-edged sword that are the commercial breaks. In most matches, I actually think they help more than they hurt because they force things to slow down and the heels to lean into their characters and the heat they're trying to get. It prevents the matches from devolving into constant noise from bell to bell. Here, you kind of wanted that though, but what we did get during the break was pretty great, with Takeshita working over Danielson's would for minutes straight. I see people complaining that Fletcher didn't rub the blood into his hair, but to be fair, Danielson came out of that commercial break with a much more interesting crimson mask than he came in, all thanks to Takeshita. Unfortunately, the timing of the break ending meant that the camera couldn't linger on Takeshita about to brainbuster Danielson on the ramp again. That was the key emotional moment of the entire match, the reversal and subsequent DDT, but the folks at home needed at least a second to understand why Claudio wasn't there to make the save. While the quick cuts between the two scenarios were a plus for most of the match to add to the chaotic feel, it did hurt a little there.

Moreover, if Fletcher needed a bit of education, the crowd did as well. They were pavlovianly shouting for tables; sometimes giving them what they want isn't the same as giving them what they need, and Danielson did that at each point, diverting them away either through yes chants or other bursts of engaging violence. If they run something like this again, on the second or third time, people will be excited for the possibility of the powder or the chain or the wire to choke with. In some ways, all that wrestling is at its very core is the conditioning of an audience over time and then the utilization of that conditioning for the sake of manipulation. Again, that's almost the opposite of some of the maximalist, pandering performances that get over so big today, but it's that carny tugging at heartstrings where the greatest artistry can be found. On this night, through violent creativity and adaptability in the moment and a commitment to the chaos at play, these four (and yes, I mean all four of them and Moxley and Hobbs for good measure), did their part in retaking just a bit of the old ways so that they might be used once again, not to pull pro wrestling back into moldering darkness but to help push it forward back towards the light.

Adam Copeland/Eddie Kingston/Mark Briscoe vs. Top Flight/Action Andretti

MD: I really like it when they run a warm-up/showcase match for a one-time trios before a PPV. It's very likely that we never see Copeland/Kingston/Briscoe again after this and this match gave us a chance to see them highlighted against a very different sort of team than the House of Black in a babyface vs. babyface match. Top Flight/Andretti are a set unit and had the superior teamwork and the speed, but they had both a size and a presence disadvantage. We've seen Ace Kingston pushing around younger guys. Mark Briscoe, here, came off as a total beast, like the Briscoes of old, just running through Dante when he had the chance. This was maybe the first time, even through a series of Cope Opens, where Copeland got to be a giant in the land of the new normal height-wise. I probably need to go back to see his work against Rey at some point, but here he was working big. There was no ultimate opportunist here. There was a running power slam instead. 

There are a lot of things that can and should make AEW Copeland different than WWE Copeland, and he's been doing an admirable job of embracing more and more of them every week, but I don't think I've seen him look quite this imposing as of yet and it was great to see. I want more of it. No one even played de facto heel here; yes, the bigger makeshift trio sort of bullied, and Top Flight double-and-tripled teamed but it wasn't personal. There was a little bit of control on Copeland and a lot on Dante, but it was back and forth and never wore out its welcome; plus, Andretti has that Tom Zenk thing about being particularly punchable. When things broke down in the end, the fireworks were exciting but also well-placed. Even the triple double clothesline felt a little novel relative to some of the spots you see in this scenario. I'm sure that anyone who didn't blink and miss it loved Dante jamming his leg on the backflip to let Copeland hit the Impaler. It was a little detail, probably unnecessary, that still added to the match. And of course the finish of the Uraken into the Spear, with Copeland sneaking Andretti into the center of the ring for the Froggy Bow, was just a perfect highlight reel combination. If we'll never get Copeland/Kingston/Briscoe again after the PPV, at least we'll have gotten two very different looks at them.

 

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24

Adam Copeland/Eddie Kingston/Mark Briscoe vs. House of Black

MD: I dug the layout for this one. After an initial tease of Copeland vs Black before the match got going, we led into initial pairings like a lucha trios. Matthews was paired with Briscoe and King was paired with Kingston. I'm not entirely sure that the build properly set up these pairings, but both the announcers and the wrestlers leaned into them. And, of course, it was all underpinned by the delayed gratification of Copeland getting his hands on Black, which is one of my all time favorite things in wrestling. I love it in Mexico (one of the best trios setups). I love it in Japan (all those Eigen/Rusher matches I've been watching lately). I love it here and they worked it wonderfully towards the finish. The pairings, generally equal, built to a real shine where Mark Briscoe took out everyone and did the amazing, terrifying chair-assisted dive over the post on the apron, which, in and of itself, led to the heat on Briscoe. He finally fought his way out of the corner to make the hot tag and everything broke down. I could have maybe went without the tower of doom spot, but I did like how they twisted it by bringing it back to Copeland and King and the Superplex. Otherwise, it was all sequenced well, centered around the subconscious notion that if only Copeland could hit the Impaler on King, he'd be able to get his hands on Black. It took three tries and an Eddie Uraken but he eventually got it, only for Mark Briscoe to come in and get his hands on Black first in yet another little inversion. That just ramped the pressure up all the more for the the spear cutoff to Cerberus' Bite (which is what we're calling the House of Black's triple corner dropkick now if you didn't get the memo) and the ultimate inversion, the misting out of nowhere just when the fans were going to get the satisfaction of Black vs Copeland. The entire match built to that rug-swept-out moment and that's just great aggravating pro wrestling to set up another show. You have to appreciate it. This maybe needed just a bit more Eddie but other than that, I enjoyed it.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Ospreay

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay NJPW 10/14

ER: It's tough to get me excited about a 30 minute long New Japan main event for one of their couple dozen different title belts, but Zack Sabre is a guy who can still engage me within a style I don't care for. I'm a Sabre Guy and I think he's a great opponent for Ospreay because he forces honesty out of him. If you put Ospreay in with a guy who is a lot like him - and Wrestling Like Ospreay seems to be the style that is omnipresent on the Indies and Japan and a lot of wrestling TV right now - it can inform his worst tendencies, and then he welcomes his opponents' worst tendencies, and then you eventually realize the match shot at least 10 minutes beyond its best finish line. I like big Sabre main events because Sabre matches don't tend to veer into any of the same kind of overkill as Ospreay vs. Ospreay Replicant, as Sabre matches always just devolve into different ways for him to twist his opponents' neck or limb joints, skipping past a lot of shocked face finisher kickouts in favor of sudden panic when a kickout leads to an unexpected submission attempt. This went 30 minutes and Sabre's honesty and build through the match really made this peak at the right moments, and the fact Ospreay lays a lot of his offense in and Sabre is dumb enough to lean into all of it just makes it better. 

They got the stand and trade elbows out of the way in the first third, as a way to actually establish the potential stiffness and introduce it into the match, Ospreay allowing Sabre three free shots and Sabre rattling his jaw on all three (especially the middle one), before leveling him in one shot in return. Sabre will have to hit harder or avoid being hit. The stand and trade letting your opponent hit you stuff works much better as a transition out of opening matwork, than as an end of match We're Having a War spot, and it's one of many great choices they make.

Sabre's submissions are really disgusting and any criticisms of the past saying people need to hold still for him during matches seems even more misguided and out of place than it did then. His matwork is honest - there's that word again - and his dumb guy face really does just fool people into thinking he's a phony. His figure 4 stump puller was incredibly nasty and we would have loved Minoru Suzuki in 1989 UWF doing that while making the calm smug faces Sabre was making here. Zack Sabre Jr.'s rosy cheeks make him look like a San Francisco Giants World Championship Run middle infielder and people hate that his rosy-cheeked softbottomed matwork looks fucking tough. He looks like a right wing tech blogger who got Actually Good at tricked out submissions and he's one of our greatest ever Gotta Hand It To's.

Sabre is impressively untelegraphed. You go through your days watching an ungodly number of Dean Malenko matches and you can see all the awkward pauses and frozen leans while waiting for guys too early, setting up the sequences while visually thinking of every step. You watch enough of him and you can see where everything is going, even if it is going fast. Zack Sabre Jr. still surprises me, which was something I didn't expect when I first saw a Sabre match 12 or 13 years ago. He still has new tricks and new ways to get to a destination, and he's really good at them. I wish we got even more of Sabre going after Ospreay's arm, because I was into every single part of it, culminating in Sabre headbutting Ospreay's arm and throwing a Kikuchi level headbutt to sit Ospreay down on the top rope, before flinging both of them off the top rope with a sort of Spanish Fly-ing Armbar that would look insane in any video game. 

Ospreay has some cool stuff, and he also has some dumb stuff. He is a Dumb Guy, and he will always do dumb things. The turnbuckle head tuck is a really great Dumb Guy spot. It's like a sadistic game an 8th grader with a bad home life would come up with. It doesn't have to make any sense in a logical way, because there's no good way to organically get a guy tucked into his own asshole while standing on a turnbuckle. Instead it's this Dumb Guy game where a guy sees how much he can work a kick at a guy's firmly prone head. Sabre winds up taking the first and third fully to the face and head, while the second kick is a true miracle worked strike, Ospreay's boot showing no light against Sabre's chin mouth and nose while also clearly not budging him in the least. Looks like we found another Gotta Hand It To. 

Relative to nothing, John Morrison would die if he hit a Skytwister Press as flush and smooth and well-placed as Ospreay's. He would just explode into Axe body spray dust. 

Finisher trading is something that you just have to expect with this style of Strong Style Main Event wrestling, so dragon suplexes are going to give people the power to throw their entire body into a back elbow attack, their eyes going white as they blackout dealing deadly versions of year 2000 EZ Money offense. But I don't think they ever tipped into overkill and I don't think we got any ridiculous kickouts. When Ospreay shut it down, he shut it down. When he started bowling through Sabre's neck with elbows and finding new ways to drop him on his face, that was it. Sabre could be the King of Stupid Faces if he really wanted to be, but he is somehow miraculously not, as the most we ever get is his actual dumb face looking dazed as Ospreay finds ways to drop him on that face. I thought this was really great, and it feels weird to say that Zack Sabre Jr. has been one of my favorite guys to watch over the last decade, but it's impossible at this point to avoid the allegations. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Ospreay vs. Naito, Just Another 6 Star Match

 

Will Ospreay vs. Tatsuya Naito NJPW 8/12/23

ER: I decided to spend 45 minutes of my Saturday listening to Kevin Kelly lackadaisically call the 2nd 6 star New Japan match of 2023.

Match starts with loose headlock transitions, lot of space between all the matwork, few can look as disinterested in matwork as Naito. Nothing looked deliberate until OSpreay starting cranking the wrist, and I liked the way Ospreay committed to the misses on his running back elbow and a slashing front kick. 

It always strikes me as odd that Ospreay commits so much to the impact of so many of moves but always prioritizes the landing on his pescados with minimal regard to impact. Road Dogg ass pescado. 

I can't believe how little two front row fans flinched when Ospreay was whipped into the guardrail, but vaults right it at high speed, coming one inch from curb stomping each of their kneecaps upon landing. I have had my face smashed by a guardrail at a wrestling show, and got my picture photographed with Misawa for use in Japanese newspapers. But I would have flinched had I actually seen the danger that was right before me. 

The apron forearms didn't do anything for me, but Ospreay took a neckbreaker off the turnbuckles to the apron and an even worse looking one from the apron to the floor. He's a guy who seems to say the type of things that somehow who takes a lot of shots to the back of the head would say, so I guess I appreciate his commitment. 

Naito's Gloria into a cool pluma blanca had good application in reasonable time, and Ospreay's fight to the bottom rope looked strong, his face and neck getting squeezed harder each time he pumped his legs closer towards the ropes

Naito's short arm back elbow to the neck is his first good strike of the match, and I like how the first one acted as a harbinger of how he'd go after Ospreay's neck down the home stretch. 

Ospreay sticking the landing on Naito's poison rana looked great, but it immediately turned into Red Shoes making one of his classically idiotic overreactions that never feels like he's actually reacting to what just happened. His arms held out in hooks, his hands clawed and his face pleading; he looked like a teen finding out his best friend drove drunk and as such won't be able to play in the big game Sunday, ruining the school's chances of going to State. It's always the dumbest fucking reactions from that guy. 

It's wild that Scoot Andrew's "making a guy hold himself on the ropes for 12+ seconds" is a move set up that has survived into 2023. We haven't found a better way to get there than this? Ospreay sets up Naito's balancing act with two hard knees to the face and hits a great shooting start press as the payoff, and while both of those are a much more violent set up for a much better payoff than what Scoot did, it's still a guy awkwardly holding himself in position for a really long time. I think most of the wrestlers that could have figured out the best way to look convincingly stuck in the ropes for that long had all stopped wrestling before Scoot Andrews innovated the set up. Finlay is the only one who comes to mind that I definitively remember being good at occupying time while balancing his body across the ropes. 

If I was impressed by Ospreay landing crown first on two neckbreakers earlier, I have to be excited about Ospreay landing on the top of his head for a great rope run tornado DDT and a smoothly followed up Valentia brainbuster.

I like Ospreay's desperate, opportunistic use of the Hidden Blade, after Naito missed the stardust press. It was a good point to set up a both-men-down situation, but the huffing melodramatic fight from their knees that they used to work back into the match was awful, and the stand and trade looked uninspired until Naito's short arm back elbows. It was a clunky way to ease into the big finishing stretch, but easily forgotten because of leading into such a hot finishing stretch. 

The back elbow to the neck that finally knocked Ospreay to his knees looked like something that would drop someone with lightning bolt nerve pain.

Ospreay hooks several kicks into Naito's left eye, easily the most WAR strikes of the match in terms of impact, great use of foot placement and thigh slap and Actually Kicking Face, Naito's falls looking really authentic. But naturally when Red Shoes prevents Ospreay from doing any kind of follow up ground and pound, he turns the entire focus of the match onto himself for the entire time he counts Naito down. This goof acts like the most important moment of the match is his humorless Frank Drebin routine, Naito down while doing Elvis That's the Way it Is kneeling finger point poses.

It's hilarious timing, because moments later, after Ospreay takes a rana reversal directly on his shoulders as fast as SUWA (just about the highest compliment I can give someone), Ospreay superkicks an off-balanced Naito fully in the mouth, Naito's bazoo resting on Ospreay's boot as if it was holding him upright for a brief moment, and once I realized Naito was clearly knocked out I understood why. Of all the times for Red Shoes to put the full spotlight on himself and make his dramatic count down the pivotal spot of the match, it does not happen when a man is actually knocked out.  

The knockout makes Naito's collapse on the follow up look that much better. It turns out that Naito becomes a really great seller when he gets knocked out and then forced to run at someone. 

You can clearly hear Ospreay calling the rest of the match, literally give Naito step by step directions to guide him through every movement, and what's insane...is that the movements were incredibly complicated AND lead to the best, most natural looking reversals of the match! Both of Naito's consecutive Destinos looked good, and neither felt expected or telegraphed. They looked like a guy who just knew how to use physics to his advantage, even though they were mostly being controlled by Ospreay. Ospreay was essentially working a lazy-eyed blow up doll and making the execution of his opponent's offense look the best it had looked all match. Ospreay's late kickout if the second Destino looked earned and burdensome, as if he was kicking out a blacked out man's heavy corpse off of him. 

On the third and final Destino he made sure to wallop the back of his head hard into the mat, and I love the insanity of not just calling for the finish to be the second Destino, which would have been a wholly valid finish. The fact he forced a kickout and then forced a corpse to do it one. more. time. is the kind of stupid wrestler brain I can really appreciate.  

This was not a 6 star match, whatever that is, or a 7 star match, or a 5 star match, or probably even a 4 star match. But the finishing stretch was good enough and unique enough because of the impressive literal carry job that I can see a scenario where you forget about the opening 15-20 minutes of mundanity. I remain unconvinced by Naito as a worker, and wish Ospreay could integrate more selling into his epics, but carry jobs always impress me and this one was him literally willing a dead body through a complicated finish, and that's cool. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Ospreay

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay RPW 2/14

PAS: I was pretty wary about this match. Ospreay is normally way too much for me, and a maximalist top British star vs. top British star match felt like heartburn was on it's way. This was certainly a big main event match, but I thought it was sensibly put together. It was going to be Ospreay's big shit against Sabre's slickness and they had a bunch of fun ways to tell that story. Sabre would slap on a bunch of nasty submissions to cut off Ospreay's momentum, but wasn't able to stanch every Ospreay attack. I really liked how Sabre countered the head tuck superkick, by slithering on to Ospreay's back and getting in hooks. Finish was exactly what it should be, as Sabre tries to put him out with a triangle choke, even landing some nasty elbows, but Ospreay is able to yank him to the top rope for a superbomb, back elbow to the head, and spinning neckbreak (all three of which looked nasty) and that is it. I was expected another five minutes of dramatic near falls, and instead it just ends when it should have. Really rare for a 2020 wrestling match.

ER: This was really great, one of those few times a year when the Segunda Caida circle overlaps with the Meltzer circle on our Venn diagram. I'm going to have issues with a lot of matches that get 30 minutes, and I don't think Ospreay is someone who has 30 minutes of material. However, I think Sabre is the best guy at fleshing out Ospreay's material, and together they make some cool music. Ospreay has some legitimately cool stuff, but there a lot of his matches I've seen have had a lot of cool dance stuff thrown out with little rhyme or reason. Sabre establishes a ton of cool reversals early in the match and makes Ospreay's trademark big spots mean something, and when Ospreay starts switching up his strategy and approaching trademark sequences differently so that they land, it just makes it all the more satisfying. I loved how Sabre connected dots on his submissions, and loved how adept he was at reversing Ospreay. These two work incredibly quick with each other, and when most guys work quick there tend to be a lot of steps that get skipped. But Sabre incredibly does not skip steps, instead is able to work super fast all while showing his work. Working this quick you wouldn't expect someone to reverse a handspring kick by catching the leg, dropping down with the ankle over shoulder, lock in a grapevine, bury a fist in the square of your opponent's back, then lock in your crossface; one of those steps (most likely the fist jammed into the back) will normally be skipped at the service of "work fast look cool".

But Sabre spent this whole match showing his work and not letting it slow him down once, and it looked awesome. I loved how quickly he was able to fly into things, like the way he leapt at Ospreay and landed in a fully locked in octopus, sinking it in as quickly and efficiently as I reach for my toothbrush. These two were like glue with each other, and when you move this fast it's super impressive to not slip out of something momentarily and then put yourself *back* into something, but I didn't notice any of that. This was all of Sabre's smoothest trippiest counters to Ospreay's flash, with Sabre baiting Ospreay into throwing out limbs and always capitalizing. Ospreay's comebacks were planned smartly and the learned behavior was really satisfying, so that once things start landing and he starts recognizing what Sabre is using as bait, starts realizing that Sabre is locking subs on from different angles, it's really fulfilling. I thought the nearfalls built nicely, and they all came off stuff that deserved to be nearfalls. My favorite was Sabre leaping onto Ospreay with a flying guillotine, hoping to drag him to the mad with the added weight of the leap, but Ospreay instead turning he weight to his advantage and shifting the momentum into a sick brainbuster. I had no idea who was winning this, and I love when a longer match like this is able to maintain that "either guy can win this at any moment" feeling throughout, while somehow not feeling like move trading, and not showing their hand.


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Matches from NJPW G1 Climax 7/6/19

I didn't really plan to write this up, and likely won't write this up in full, but there are a couple intriguing on-paper match-ups that I might give dashed off live style reviews to.

Jeff Cobb/Ren Narita vs. Tomohiro Ishii/Shota Umino

ER: I don't think I've seen either Young Lion, but thought they were fine. Narita threw an unexpectedly nice belly to belly. Are Young Lions still only allowed to do dropkicks and elbows and boston crabs? It felt like these two did a lot more than that. Ishii looks really small here, and Cobb looks bigger than he's been. Ishii looks a little softer too, and it wouldn't be too shocking to find out he's got a zillion built up injuries that make intense workouts tough. Cobb's stop motion reverse back suplex is one of the most spectacular moves in wrestling. A lot of this doesn't quite work as Cobb/Ishii do several of their "we're standing and hitting each other hard" moments and Ishii just doesn't look like a guy hitting hard. This would have been more fun as two singles, give the young guys each a 5 minute match against a vet.

Lance Archer vs. Will Ospreay

ER: Archer is now cosplaying Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and his decades old bad lower back tattoo is slowly but surely morphing into just a full black backpiece. This match would have made for a really exciting series of GIFs, but I sadly had to watch the thing in real time. Archer is apparently a guy who moved tickets in the Dallas area, so this is his showcase match, and he showed me that he's still a guy who is really awful at getting into position for offense and still just stands their motionless waiting to receive offense. This happened the entire match, and it looked awful each time. There were a lot of cool moments, Ospreay is always going to have cool moments. But a ton of the moments required Archer to suddenly not be selling any kind of big move that he had just taken, just a constant stream of Archer popping up from a big move right away only to then stand still in place waiting for the next move. The timing is all sorts of wonky. Archer hit a boss chokeslam through a ringside table (killer height by Ospreay), there were a cool Ospreay code red in the aisle, Ospreay's springboard dropkick to Archer's face as Archer crawled back into the ring was awesome, and that's the thing: a lot of these moves looked awesome as long as you forced yourself to not think of the inorganic set-up. It would make for a sick 2 minute YouTube comp, if people still make those. Included in that compilation would be Ospreay making the dumbest "He kicked out at 2!?!?!? G-G-G-G-Ghostssssssssss!" face. What a goober. Archer won with a claw in Texas, and I will give them credit for that being cool. But I don't think even the claw is cool enough to make Archer look cool.

Bad Luck Fale vs. EVIL

ER: I am arguably the biggest fat guy wrestler torch bearers on the internet, but Fale is really a guy I struggle with. He is a not as good Kareem Muhammad, just an impossibly boring big fat guy. Here he's a giant fat guy who tries to win by count out (which is an amusing giant guy heel tactic) and tries to use chairs, while being the third most important and interesting person in the match. When you're less interesting than Marty Asami and EVIL, you done messed up. Asami is weirdly the focus of the entire match, as every spot is merely a set up for him to do some big bump across the ring, on the floor, or to the floor. Asami even refs the very next match, and doesn't oversell any of these actual attacks the way most refs do, so it literally just felt like a showcase for some of the big bumps Asami learned. EVIL hits a bunch of nice hard lariats and a cool headbutt, but Fale kind of only knows how to sell lariats by standing there and lightly swaying like a less impressive Giant Gonzalez. Not great.

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. SANADA

ER: Sanada is a NJ guy I really liked 2-3 years ago, whose stock has fallen the higher he moves up the card. He's a guy I liked in multimans and a guy I like much less in singles. But this one still jumped out on paper for me. It just didn't really live up to whatever hype I had for it. I think I fell for Sanada when I saw him in more multimans, when he came off like a throwback big bumping UPW wrestler. A guy without much offense but could take a couple bumps that looked heavier than they actually were. This was just him doing a bunch of mirror sequences with Sabre while Sabre mocked him in between mirror sequences. Don't get me wrong, I laughed several times at Sabre mocking him. But that's because Sanada looked like someone that should be mocked. The only interesting part of this was one of the stand and trade sections, where I thought all of the "fighting out of a straitjacket" submission stuff looked really great. The rest felt like Sabre leading Sanada through the same sequences that look better with other opponents. There were a couple cool reversals (I like uppercuts reversed into backslides, and I like backslides a lot in general), but the subs never went anywhere interesting and the finish felt like Sanada fell into a victory. Sabre was funny throughout the match, I liked him waiting to roll back into the ring at the 19 count, but it made Sanada like like a punk and the match didn't have enough good to override that.

KENTA vs. Kota Ibushi

ER: KENTA is not the guy people remembered from 10 years ago, and he was a flawed wrestler 10 years ago. Now he's a step slower and could still act like a dick, but he's never going to come off cool like Masa Fuchi, he's just going to come off like a junior who isn't as good at doing his same set of moves. KENTA looked out of shape and slow, and that's not a super interesting thing to see. Ibushi had some real nice sells of KENTA's stuff, he can really class up a Go 2 Sleep, but KENTA seems totally washed to me. There's still upside to a lazy asshole gimmick, but his needs work. He did stomp an big old hole in Ibushi's guts, really didn't seem to pull back in any way off the top, and that's something. A lot of fans are really hyped that "KENTA is back", the problem being this guy was never the guy they thought he was even in his prime, and that prime is looking streets behind at this point.

Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

ER: I can never quite put my finger on it, but something about Okada always reads "water polo dick". I didn't watch this. I later saw a GIF of Tanahashi's high fly flow to the floor, and those always look great. I hope the people who watched this got what they wanted out of it.

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: WALTER vs. Ospreay

107. WALTER vs. Will Ospreay OTT 10/13

ER: This was the main event of the 4 year anniversary show, and the fans wanted fireworks, and really there's nothing I'd rather see from feds like this than a big brute chopping and clotheslining a dude out of the sky. Ospreay has that wild Jack Evans body control, but sometimes the set-ups cause things to linger a bit too much. WALTER is not someone to linger, and if things are taking too long you're going to get one of his limbs swinging at you. WALTER breaks out some nasty things in this match, chopping Ospreay across the back when Ospreay attempted a tope en reversa, powerbombing him onto the stage, booting him under the chin on a shooting star attempt, there was definitely a theme of Ospreay lingering or wanting more and then getting crushed because of it. Ospreay's flipping kicks didn't land as well here as I've seen them land, though when you're bringing them in bunches you at least bring a quantity over quality approach to things, and quantity is a smart thing to bring in a fight against WALTER. I thought Ospreay's strikes were at their best when they weren't gussied up, like when he was holding WALTER's head while kicking at his chest, kicking at WALTER's back, or his nice hooking kicks after teasing a belt shot. But it's a fool's game to stay too close to WALTER, and WALTER brings all the big slaps, chops, and lariats to the chest back and head (including knocking Ospreay onto the side of his head with one down the stretch). I love moments of WALTER frustration, where he gets that "done messing around" face and just scoops up Ospreay like a child, dropping him with a piledriver or at one point placing him on the top rope just to chop him and choke him with his boot. Ospreay got a lot of moments of flash, trying to string together multiple attacks to fell the beast, and taking some impressive bumps for all of WALTER's most dangerous attacks. I loved down the stretch when Ospreay went to the top and WALTER rushed in to clothesline him hard in the back of the knees, then dumped him off the ropes on his head. WALTER finishing everything with a classic big man splash off the top was sweet icing.

PAS: This was a very 2018 indy match, they are like watching Live Free and Die Hard: it was great when he was just a guy in a tower with bloody feet, but by movie four he is leaping off a fighter jet. I really liked big parts of this. Ospreay is kind of a goon, but is certainly athletic and has big spots and takes big bumps. WALTER is really great at beating on a guy, and he lays in some gigantic shots, and I love all of his cut offs, very King Kong swiping planes out of the air. The spot where Ospreay shooting star presses right into WALTER's feet was truly uncalled for, and I don't know how Ospreay wasn't spitting out his teeth. Lots of dramatic kicks outs - I mean lots of them - but I liked the actual finish a ton. WALTER flying across the ring to cut out Osprey's legs was awesome, it felt like a linebacker blindside walloping a QB, and the big dude splash is great too. I get why this went 30+, but I could easily see this finishing pretty high with a good editor.


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2016 Ongoing MOTY List

84. Will Ospreay vs. Matt Riddle PROGRESS Wrestling 11/27

PAS: After seeing their awesome match at the WWN Supershow, I wanted to check out their early matchup. This was worked as a total sprint, with Riddle jumping Osprey at the bell with a big jumping knee, it pretty much stays on 10 for the whole 8 minutes, and really builds to an exciting finish. Riddle is really good at Hearns vs. Hagler style all out matches, and while this had some goofy Osprey stuff it moves at such a pace that it is easy to gloss over. Loved the out of nowhere wall flip by Osprey and the intense ground and pound leading to the twister was awesome by Riddle. Weird pair of guys to have such good chemistry, but they really do.

ER: It’s really fun seeing two hyper-athletic guys match up and go as hard as they can for 10 minutes. There are a few of these super athletes that I love watching in short bursts, and usually end up hating their matches that go 15+. Give me something like Low-Ki vs. John Morrison and all their weird landings and crazy body control for 10 minutes, all day. Give me a 20 minute John Morrison match? I’ma pass. Riddle and Ospreay are amazing athletes, who don’t always work a match structure that I’m going to enjoy. But I liked their bonkers WM weekend kickout-fest, and this was even shorter and sprintier. I couldn’t be more happy with the beginning of this match, as Riddle is introduced and opts to skip past much of Ospreay’s introduction, sprinting to center ring and pasting Ospreay with a leaping knee and dumps him with a deadlift German. I’m in. Riddle on the attack with Ospreay reeling is really fun, Ospreay is a very capable seller and can put over a beating, and Riddle is someone who is going to lace in the elbow shots and kicks. I thought Ospreay working his way back into the match was done well, especially liked him getting a drop toehold that sent Riddle flying face first into the turnbuckle. I was watching this match at the Phoenix airport and some stranger sneaking glances thought Riddle had just tripped and landed face first into the buckle. I tried to explain to him and show him that Ospreay tripped him, but the person was convinced that Riddle messed something up. I'm never getting that time back. But hats off to these two for convincing this man that the thing that was supposed to happen (Riddle hitting the buckles with his face), actually happened. These two did not save me from this man then sitting behind me on the plane and having a 2 hour one-way conversation with another man, who said perhaps 40 words the entire flight in response. Sample conversation from this casual observer: "I don't typically like Corona, and I never buy them. They're a little too...I don't know...cliche? I typically go for Bud Light with Lime. You try it and it's like beer with lemonade and you're going 'okay I can get used to this'." Fuck this guy so hard. At the end of the flight the victim of this one-way conversation got off the plane with only a paperback in his hand. I bet he was looking forward to getting two solid hours of reading time on his knew book, and Mr. "I once knew a girl from Boston. Never been there though. Always been curious, just haven't been" went and ruined that for him. Anyway, Ospreay gets a big flying comeback, runs up a freaking wall out of nowhere, big Space Flying Tiger Drop, and they do some stupid stuff that I don't care about: Riddle can kind of zombie in place waiting for moves to hit sometimes, the sequence ending with the Pele kick was too dance-y and ended with Riddle selling as much as Ospreay for some reason, and the strike exchange on the knees was horseshit. But a 10 minute sprint with guys like this (and there really aren't many "guys like this") should always tear, and this one tore.

2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Wrestlemania Weekend Cherry Picking: WWNLive SuperShow - Mercury Rising 2018

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Munenori Sawa

PAS: Sabre actually worked a FUTEN show in 2015, and seems to be really excited to work a BattlArts guy. He keeps this mostly BattlArts style, with the matwork being pretty shooty, and really dialing down his flourishes (in fact any of the goofy stuff in the match was done by Sawa). There is some really nice grappling early. With Sawa working for leglocks, and Sabre attacking the arm. They exchange some nasty slaps to the ear which is the stiffest I can remember Sabre working, he really laid into Sawa and bloodied his mouth. Finish run was awesome, with Sabre yanking Sawa out of the air on a kick attempt and putting on a nasty STF variation. After Sawa gets to the ropes, they exchange some shots, and Sabre does another cool counter as he ducks the Ohtani punch and drags Sawa down into a sleeper which he quickly transitions into a banana split for the tap. I really liked this, it was one of my favorite Sabre performances, it wasn't his best match, but I thought he maximized the cool shit, and minimized the dumb shit in a really entertaining way.

ER: This was maybe the most savage I've ever seen Sabre work, and it's on the same card that will later see Riddle work like a total lunatic. I had thought of skipping this match as I thought they would bring out bad tendencies in each other, but I was wrong. The rolling is really fun and springy and you get the sense that Sabre can just grab a limb whenever he wants. Really I would have been cool with it staying there, but we forget that Sawa came back after 7 years to get his body and face attacked. Sabre brings his best ever smacks and uppercuts, and before long it looks like Sawa has a port wine stain on his neck and chest. Sabre can come off cocky even when facing guys way larger, so it's fun watching him be so smug and jerky to a guy smaller than him. He was really picking on Sawa, but I loved how he sold for Sawa's stuff, love how he crumpled on the Ohtani punch, loved Sawa yanking and twisting his leg and ankle on the apron. But Sabre was pretty relentless, really seeming like he could bully Sawa around and grab an octopus whenever he wanted, and the banana split finish was a real trip. Sawa looked like he was tied to two trucks driving in the opposite direction, and Sabre soaks up the adulation from fans afterwards. Great performance, a real smug cad, and a fun note to go out on for Sawa (unless this is him back in wrestling?). Killer match.

Dominic Garrini/Tracy Williams vs. Anthony Henry/James Drake vs. Parrow/Odinson

ER: Big old sloppy weapons brawl between teams that I'd rather just see in a straight match. This was fun, except for all of the moments that were dumb. Really the problems all could have been avoided by just having a straight tag match with any combination of the teams. The best moments of the match were always when one team was gone missing for several minutes. The End may have spent more of the match hiding in the entranceway - which is weird for the two hulking gladiators of the match to be doing - or selling injuries on the floor from moves meant to take them out of the match. But they were also the victims of cruelly rigid tables, absolutely refusing to cooperate. Parow gets powerbombed through a table, only to slide off as the unbroken table gets pushed away. Odinson gets double stomped through one, but just eats a double stomp with no breaking table. The dumbest parts were always setting up a 3 way spot, peaking with "stereo" top rope suplex/powerbomb spots that the crowd groaned through. I don't think anyone wants to see tower spots anymore. Tower spots are over. The risk of injury never feels worth the end result. The match did have a bunch of guys throwing hard. Williams was really pasting guys with elbows, so was Henry. And the chair/ladder shots were actually pretty great in a reckless Eddie Kingston way. Drake and Garrini throw ladders hard at Odinson, Parrow eats a couple chairshots to the chest, tough stuff. Garrini was part of a couple great moments, hitting a somersault dive off the top, getting his feet slammed in a ladder and hit with chairs, and getting pounced through a set-up-in-the-corners table by The End. Henry & Drake do a huge extended beatdown of the End before finishing the match, it actually made them come off totally badass. The End never even attempted a comeback, just Henry & Drake beating them with chairs and ladders and a big fat Drake moonsault. Between hiding in the entrance for the first several minutes, and getting a few minute beating to end the match, The End didn't exactly come off like contenders. A gif of this match would be really fun, but there really was a lot I liked about it.

Keith Lee vs. Daisuke Sekimoto

PAS: Pretty much exactly what you want out of this match up, a pair of big corn fed dudes throwing chops and forearms at each others chests.  Sekimoto may make some goofy faces for no good reason, but he is a crowbar. He was throwing really nasty meaty forearms and big chops, and Lee was pounding him back. That double over hand chop spot by Lee is really something to see. I thought this fell off a bit when they started doing top rope moves, but that closing german suplex by Sekimoto was gorgeous.

Timothy Thatcher/WALTER vs. Chris Dickinson/Jaka

ER: A good tag match that felt like it should have been hitting me harder than it actually did hit me. I enjoyed all of it and obviously like both teams, but I kept getting weirdly distracted wondering why it wasn't totally connecting with me. I'm really like Jaka right now so I was into his beatdown building to a big tag out to Dickinson, liked his big kicks and German suplex to Thatcher before Dickinson came in and roughed him up more. Dickinson hot tags are some great pro wrestling, he always comes in fast and swinging. Jaka has a fun twist on Islander striking, and even goes for a Kona Crush head squeeze which...yes I just confirmed, Hawaii is an island. We get consecutive hot tags, as Jaka builds to tagging Dickinson, and they isolate Thatcher which builds to a big WALTER tag. WALTER, you may have noticed, has some great hot tags. WALTER comes in on a chop rampage, and I love when he goes for a double clothesline, only gets Jaka, rebounds off the other side and meets Dickison with a boot. The match peaks with my favorite moment, WALTER getting Dickinson in the Gojira Clutch only for Jaka to save him with a huge full force splash off the top. But I kept wondering why I was never fully hooked, and I think it was just because there weren't really defined face/heel roles, just four good wrestlers who are capable of working both (though I suppose when in doubt, just assume Dickinson is the least likable one), and while they built to tags there was still a lot of this that felt like a Texas Tornado. The work looked great, but it felt cluttered and compressed. I think it needed more of a peaks/valleys set up. At minimum it was four guys I like, working hard in a tag match, and that will have a lot of value.

Will Ospreay vs. Matt Riddle

PAS: Riddle continues his incredible Mania weekend with a wild sprint with Osprey. Osprey comes in with his neck taped from a gif worthy blown spot in New Japan, and Riddle just viciously attacks him. He really feels like he wants to knocks his blocky yellowed British teeth down his throat. Osprey gets his neck wrecked with Riddle just crawling all over him and landing sick elbows right to the KT tape on his neck. The spot where Osprey climbs to the top rope with Riddle on his back, only to get murder deathed off the top rope was truly nuts. I honestly would have been fine with the match ending there, it would have established Riddle as a vicious killer, and Osprey as a tough guy with a death wish. The post restart stuff was great though, the crowd gets totally behind Osprey and his comeback and it ends up being really frenzied and great. I wouldn't think these guys would work well together, as Riddle against flyers is often iffy, but this was a hell of war. Loved it.

ER: Man, do I like small occasional doses of Ospreay?? He's got an overly sleek athleticism that annoys me sometimes, but he also is like a super gymnast Chris Hamrick in his dedication to going through painful spots for the sake of a worked injury. That's a pretty big thing. His match with Liger got a little ignored compared to other matches on that card, but his injury in that was super convincing and hooked me in. And here he gets dumped on his neck early with an exploder and is squeezing and rubbing that neck out from there. And Riddle aims to just wreck Ospreay's neck in as many ways as he can think of. Riddle was pretty merciless, really hitting too damn hard with elbows and kicks, and punishing Ospreay's neck. The fans get way behind Ospreay as some of the damage starts to feel almost uncomfortable at a point, due to Riddle relentless attack and Ospreay's selling. Ospreay gets one big run that Riddle treats like a big deal, but before long Riddle is tossing him with rolling gutwrenches, wastes him with a powerbomb that gets followed up with a knee (that really bends Ospreay back over himself in painful fashion), and things peak with Riddle going for a sleeper and then the Bromission, throwing a bunch of elbows at Ospreay's head, and we get this crazy moment of Ospreay climbing the ropes with Riddle holding a sleeper....and Riddle does a Crucifix Driver off the top and several people clearly jump up as if they've just witnessed the death of Will Ospreay. The stoppage was nice as Riddle comes back and destroys Ospreay with knees, rips at his tape, hits a huge senton, plants him with a jumping tombstone, looking completely deranged. We do run a little crazy with all the kickouts down the stretch, but I did really love Ospreay's triangle couter to Riddle;s piledriver. Riddle was great at struggling to escape, rolling around, trying to stand, trying to strike at Ospreay, then gets just totally laid out by an Ospreay lariat and snapped in half by a sitout powerbomb. So the last couple minutes of this were insane, most definitely overkill, but the savagery in Riddle's face woke this crowd up HUGE. If all this came at the end of a 24 minute match, I'd be out, but here I liked how the insanity just kept ramping up. You got the actual sense that the match would continue until one guy was actually injured.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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