Will Ospreay Talks Criticism For His Match With Ricochet, Vader's Response, Pro Wrestling Tastes
Recently on The Wrestling Compadres Slamcast, Will Ospreay talked about his controversial match against Ricochet for New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Best Of The Super Juniors tournament. Ospreay admitted that he did not expect that the match would garner the attention that it did. Ospreay addressed the criticism that the match lacked psychology and selling. Also, Ospreay compared people's differing opinions on the match to religion and music.
According to Ospreay, he was surprised at the controversy the match with Ricochet caused as well as the attention it received online, as this match was not the first meeting between the two.
"I generally had no idea it was going to happen because we'd done, I'm not going to say a similar style match, but we'd done some of the stuff we did over in Evolve. And it was just one of those matches where, like, once again, me and Ricochet have been working each other, like, five times now. We know each other's style." Ospreay added, "we know each other's s–t, so yeah, we just went out there, and as soon as we had done the double handspring backflip, man, we just [knew] the crowd came on fire. It was like, 'alright, we've got something here'. But for some strange reason, the internet [has] just gone nuts over this one particular match."
While Ospreay suggested that Vader played a major role in generating curiosity over and interest in the match with his negative response to it, 'The Aerial Assassin' claimed that 'The Mastodon' never actually watched the match.
"He hasn't watched the match. I asked him straight out. I was like, 'have you seen the match?' He was like, 'no'," Ospreay recalled. "Rest holds are the way forward, guys. Sorry."
In response to criticisms arguing that the match did not look like a real, hotly contested bout, Ospreay asserted that every move in the match was purposive and suggested that there is a difference between a match with many counters and a match looking overly choreographed.
"Yeah, yeah, it was very controversial because, once again, those people are saying, 'they're not trying to beat each other up'. It's like, well, if you look at it in depth, we were doing counters to counters, and everyone knows we do that handspring, like, Superman pose. That's our thing that we do. Like, everything we had done had meaning [behind] it. Everything had a story behind it."
Finally, Ospreay professed that a person's taste in professional wrestling is like religious belief or musical preference insofar as there is no right or wrong religion and no objectively best genre of music.
"It's just some people had different perceptions about what [professional] wrestling is. The only [thing] I can relate it to is like I'm a Christian. I believe that there is a God. I believe there is a heaven and hell. And you guys are Buddhist, and you believe in your God. Just because I believe in my thing and you believe in your thing, it doesn't mean you're wrong and I'm right. It's like different styles of music. It's different styles of wrestling."
In addition to discussing these topics, Ospreay talked about his experiences with New Japan, his falling out with TNA, and more. To check out the show, click here. If you use any of the quotes from this article, please credit The Wrestling Compadres Slamcast with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: The Wrestling Compadres Slamcast