Will Ospreay on Rip Rogers Comment, His Style, Ricochet

….Dive. Will Ospreay is one of the top independent wrestling stars in the world today and performs almost everywhere as a result. He’s a former Ring of Honor TV Champion and regularly wrestles in New Japan. However, he’s also someone who has recently drawn some controversy due to his recent issues with Rip Rogers.

Ospreay recently spoke with “USA Today” about his career and all of the issues people have with his reputation. He also speaks on the one year anniversary of his infamous match with Ricochet at last year’s Best of the Super Juniors tournament, which changed the way people looked at his matches. Here are some highlights:

On the Ricochet Match

“I’m surprised it raised so many eyebrows. But I think people wanted to have that conversation about what is professional wrestling. I feel like there’s a lot of people who have accepted that wrestling has changed and it needs to evolve. Then, there’s a lot of people like Van Vader and Jim Cornette that have problems with it evolving. They don’t like what I do and they don’t consider it professional wrestling, and they’re welcome to that opinion. To an extent, I don’t believe what I do is professional wrestling, and I’ll happily admit that.”

On What he Considers Wrestling

“I consider it an art form. I consider the grace and athleticism of everything that I do as art. Wrestling is an art. I don’t look at death match wrestling and say that’s not wrestling. I don’t look at technical wrestling and say that’s not wrestling. Sure, in a real fight, I’d be going in fists flying, full guns blazing, but everything is different in wrestling. I align it to movies.

“I don’t go to a movie and not enjoy it because certain aspects aren’t real. I go to into it and say that I’m open-minded. I’m the Spiderman of professional wrestling. Everything that I can do, the superhero Spiderman would be out to do. I try to do whatever I can to maneuver myself out of a situation and using the environment to change the game.”

And on Rogers’ Criticisms

“These veterans hate me, I don’t know why. But I agree with Rip Rogers 100%. Wrestling has become the same old, same old. But look at myself and Jay White (at War of the Worlds). It followed that flippy floppy, Humpty Dumpty formula, but look at that crowd reaction. It’s what they desire and what they want. If it’s making money for Ring of Honor, if it’s making money for myself and my family and entertaining thousands upon thousands of fans, what’s wrong with it? I do have so much respect for Rip Rogers. I have respect for everyone who wants to criticize my work. Please do. But I’m not a shy person. I do bite back.”

You can read the full interview here.

Opinion: The Ospreay vs. Rogers feud has been covered rather extensively and I’ll say the same thing I’ve said before: Ospreay is indeed getting great crowd reactions but those crowds aren’t the biggest in the world. There are arguments on both sides and if both sides are happy, there’s nothing wrong with either style.