Just a little bit of housekeeping here before mania week puts me too far behind in my 2023 viewing. Ospreay/Omega feels like the biggest match this year I’ve not shared my views on, mainly because back in early January I was cranky as hell having just been diagnosed with a hernia and was not in the mood for the high-end athletic ability of Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega. After Kenny’s great match with El Hijo Del Vikingo last week I was finally in the mood to revisit his big Dome Show encounter with Ospreay over the IWGP US Championship.
The first 80% of this match is absolutely fantastic and on another level to any other wrestling match I’ve seen this year.
You know both guys are gonna bring flawless execution of their brand of wrestling to the table, but the bonus was they brought the aggression and petty hate to the match that was warranted after the shots fired leading up to Wrestle Kingdom. A minute in they're already doing nasty bumps into the guard rail to go along with their high-octane offence - not a hint of a feeling out process at all in this one. Omega works over the back for a while and Ospreay hits some of his regular routines, but then they start sprinkling in spots worthy of the biggest show of the year. Omega does the Japanese table stomp spot to Ospreay, who retaliates with a suplex onto the metal frame of the underside of the table followed by a sensational corkscrew dive.
Where things reach the next level is Omega giving Ospreay a DDT onto the exposed turnbuckle which busted Ospreay open. A huge spot which sets up the next chapter in this match - the butchering of Ospreay. With blood streaming down his face, Ospreay then has his head repeatedly bashed into the broken table by Omega. He then went on a parade of piledrivers, dragon suplexes and V-Triggers that reduced Ospreay to a lifeless ragdoll being flung around the ring without mercy. Vicious Kenny is the best Kenny.
And then we come to the final 20% of this match where the match went in a direction I hated. Despite hanging onto the match by a thread for the last 5 minutes since he got busted open, Ospreay then rallies to run through his finisher combos in a baffling comeback.....only to lose to Omega anyway. I’m an Ospreay fan generally speaking, but I can’t stand his closing stretches where every match, regardless of his opponent, he insists on running through the Oscutter, Stormbreaker and Hidden Blade where the first couple will always be kicked out of. It’s like a bastardised, modern version of Undertaker’s Chokeslam, Last Ride and Tombstone Piledriver nearfalls during streak matches – only Ospreay is doing it every match he has!! I remember when the Hidden Blade was created as Ospreay’s death move and it concussed Ibushi in the Tokyo Dome, it was his Burning Hammer, and now he’s hitting the fucking thing 3 times a match and they always kick out of the first one. I'll be here for another 1,000 words if I go into detail about how dumb the counter to the Oscutter looks.
For me the ending of
this match would have been so much better if Ospreay just toned down his
ridiculous comeback, maybe limit it to one big hope spot, and he loses to Omega
about 5 minutes earlier than he did to put over the blood loss and how on the
ropes he looked. To insert Ospreay’s ‘epic’
closing stretch actually turned an extraordinary match into an ordinary match. In these moments Ospreay isn't a wrestler who reacts to the situation he's faced with. He resorts to his instincts and empties his chamber when it's time to go home - and after years of watching him do in every match it all starts to ring hollow. This is why I'm never quite all the way in with him and have to stop short of 'wrestler of the year' or 'match of the year' talk.
That Kenny Omega though, he's off to a good start for 2023 wrestler of the year conversations.
So I don't know what to do with this match given how much I loved the majority of the action, but how irritating I found the ending. I'm gonna add it to the MOTY ongoing list, but right at the bottom so it sets the standard of what to beat to make the list. Typically I only add matches that are the whole package that I enjoyed from start to finish, but this is too good to write off.
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