Will Ospreay believes his Wrestle Kingdom 17 match with Kenny Omega was a game-changer.
Later this month, Will Ospreay will meet a familiar rival as he makes his way to Canada for a cross-promotional event hosted by AEW and NJPW. That event, of course, is Forbidden Door. There, Ospreay will challenge Omega for the IWGP United States Championship, the same title Ospreay lost to him at Wrestle Kingdom 17 in January.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Ospreay reflected on his previous match with Kenny Omega. Amidst the conversation, Ospreay detailed some of the things he learned from their match together. Though the two share a history of beef on the internet, Ospreay says their Wrestle Kingdom clash was a collaborative effort.
“His mind operates differently, for sure. I can’t explain it,” Ospreay said of Kenny Omega. “It’s like a mad scientist when you watch him work. Doing that one at [Wrestle Kingdom], it’s incredible to watch. It was incredible to watch it and then to collaborate on stuff together. I didn’t think it was gonna be what it turned out to be, so then finally watching the art play out, and everything that we wanted to hit, hit, and then the gore, the eye swelling up, I think we both have a mutual thing like we were both going to come out of this f— up. But if we’re gonna come out f— up, it needs to be special. I remember even saying like, ‘Man, I feel like I could have done better.’ I remember TJ slapping me on my head. He was like, ‘Shut up.’ You’ve done a great job.”
At one point in the match, Omega placed a table on top of Ospreay and delivered a vicious stomp through the table and onto Ospreay’s back. This spot has left “The Aerial Assassin” with a permanent scar.
“I’ve got still got that down there [points to his back]. It f—- killed. That killed, man,” Ospreay said. “People thought that he missed, man. He didn’t. He f— got it, and then the table splintered up and scratched my back. I got scar there forever now. It’s like the scar here [points to his forehead] where he was just putting my f—- head through the table. F—, that hurt.”
After nearly 35 minutes of competition, Kenny Omega finally grounded Ospreay with a One Winged Angel to capture the victory. Despite his loss, Ospreay feels the match may have been a game-changer for him.
“Five minutes, I was going, ‘F—, I’m dying. Let me take a breath. But no, I can’t tell in the Tokyo Dome. The noise comes up, and it goes straight up. You hardly hear it. It comes out and comes straight up. I didn’t know what the final outcome was. There was even parts of me just going like, ‘I could have moved a bit better or done…’”
“But then just looking at it, it was this moment of just going, ‘Man, this was actually really f— good. It felt game-changer, you know what I mean?’ When I wrestled Shinto the first time, I felt like that put me to a new stratosphere. It put me up a level in the star rankings. I feel like I became a little bit more, like, ‘Alright, he’s out. He’s escaping that mid-card level.’ So doing the Kenny one, oh, now I’ve got to come back from this.”
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The full interview is available here:
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