Will Ospreay comments on his controversial press conference with Kenny Omega.
Just days before their big match at Wrestle Kingdom 17 earlier this year, Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega had a war of words at the pre-match press conference. The promo between both performers would end up being a viral hit among fans in the internet wrestling community, as both Ospreay and Omega said some scathing things about one another.
In a new exclusive interview with Fightful, Ospreay talked about the press conference and some of the criticisms surrounding it.
"So there’s two sides of me when it comes to that promo. One side is the people that are telling me I can’t do a promo without swearing and to those people I say, ‘You must just watch the Disney channel every fucking day of your life.’ Just because somebody swears in a promo, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Have you ever seen Quentin Tarantino films? There’s swearing all the time. But they’re magical movies. But I do understand to reach that next level of audience, you do have to mind your P’s and Q’s, and I say cunt religiously. It’s my favorite word ‘cause it can mean a term of endearment or I could just fucking call you a cunt. But that promo is kind of special to me because even though I didn’t do near as many of the isolation or the quarantines as some of the other boys, it fucked with everyone’s head. To see Kenny—and there were other AEW guys, I can’t remember who, I’ll happily go through it —that were like, ‘It’s funny you guys have to mention us in promos,’ and stuff like that. I can’t remember what the thing was. But it was like, ‘Motherfucker, we are working way harder than any of those motherfuckers.’ You had your guys around ringside banging shit and making noise for you, and then you guys got to have fans back straight away. They were there, they couldn’t make any fucking noise. Do you
know how hard that is? How taxing that is? All those guys, I bet maximum drive was a six hour drive for some of those cunts. You didn’t have to be locked in a fucking room no bigger than this room for two weeks. I honestly say anyone who dares belittle anything we did during that pandemic, you’re a cunt. You have no idea the fucking stress. There were points in the night where you’d call your missus. They’d go, ‘When are you coming home?’ I’d be like, ‘I don’t actually know because their measures keep changing in Japan.’ All those guys, they get to go to their missus or partner or whatever and they all get to cuddle up. We didn’t get to do that. Fucking months, bruv. They need to mind their P’s and Q’s, and when they know who the actual fucking wrestlers are, come knock on my door. I’ll show you who the fuck I am."
Following the press conference, Omega and Ospreay went on to have one of the most acclaimed matches of 2023 thus far. Ospreay went on to talk about said match and how he got his ass handed to him during it.
"I even remember Dave messaging me being like, ‘That was special. You have no idea.’ Once again, Dave’s opinion is Dave’s opinion. But it’s only the next day when you digest everything and everyone was going nuts about it. There was no negative. It was just phenomenal. I’ll say it until the day I die, Kenny’s one of the best wrestlers in the world. He’s still a cunt, but the way his mind works, he has a complete different outlook on the matches. I think that’s where I need to put my mind into his just because it clearly works from what he’s doing. I know we get compared a lot, but we’re just two completely different guys. I’m proud of the match. I am. Trust me, I really am. I’m glad people enjoyed it. But it fucks me off that if you honestly watch it and really, really fucking watch it, it was 80% Kenny, 20% me. I got my ass handed to me, you know what I mean? It just bothers me. It’s one of those things where the whole thing—the press conference, I poured my heart out. Everyone was going, ‘Kenny’s back. The chosen one’s back. The prodigal son returns.’ I’m sitting there just being like, ‘Motherfucker. You just did three hour drives and did easy television matches no where near the caliber we were fucking doing.’ Even the AEW Championship matches were fucking incredible, but nothing compared to what all the New Japan boys were doing. We were pushing ourselves beyond all belief, man. It was that moment
where it was a phenomenal match. Great. But I need to regain my pride on this, man. It can’t be 80/20. It needs to be 80/20 the other way around."
Elsewhere in the interview, Ospreay talked about his match with Hiroshi Tanahashi at NJPW Resurgence. Click here to learn more.
Fans can find results from NJPW Resurgence and other past NJPW shows by visiting our results section.
