AEW’s Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay turned in the Match of the Year at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17
Ospreay #Ospreay
Wrestle Kingdom 17‘s first 10 matches were all good to very good – with one lone expectation – but when Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay made their way into the ring – scored to “One Winged Angel” and “Elevated,” respectively – fans in the Tokyo Dome were treated to nothing short of a legendary bout, with 6-stars the absolute minimum the match should receive, Dave Meltzer.
Ospreay, for fans who somehow aren’t familiar with him at this point, is an absolute star; a natural heel due to his, shall we say, brash energy, Ospreay worked face against “The Best Bout Machine” of AEW after being consistently belittled by “The Cleaner” during the match’s build-up, pointing out how he left his family behind to for weeks on end to entertain fans who couldn’t even cheer him on during the pandemic. He began the match attempting to match wits with Omega, but unfortunately, that strategy didn’t work all too well when Omega put him through a table, hit him with a DDT on an exposed turnbuckle, and then dropped him on the outside to a degree that the entire United Empire had to come to his aid to make sure their heavily-bleeding friend was still conscious.
Omega, to his credit, worked a match that would make any heel, even Sephiroth, proud; he attacked his helpless foe, modified the rules by introducing exposed turnbuckles and tables to the equation, and even spent the better part of five minutes beating the you-know-what out of a foe who may-or-may not have even been conscious at the time. Ospreay ate V-Triggers to the front and back of his head, took Rises of the Terminators, and ultimately took the One-Winged Angel after attempting to field a comeback with blood dripping down his eyes.
There’s no doubt about it, this was a match designed to make Ospreay into a star, and it succeeded; he took oh so much punishment from his opponent and yet, popped up every single time whether he was flipped out of the ring into a guard rail, or he was planted on the crown of his neck in one of the dozen or so moves Omega used to target his opponent’s weaker point. Heck, even the One-Winged Angel, a move with a near-100 percent success rate, wasn’t a guaranteed finisher for Ospreay, as if he kicked out of the move, few would have faulted NJPW, as the match was just that good.
So where does New Japan go from here? Where does AEW go from here? Heck, where does professional wrestling period go from here? Kenny Omega is the IWGP United States Champion, despite failing to appear in an NJPW ring since he left the promotion after Wrestle Kingdom 13, not even for a match on NJPW Strong alongside his fellow AEW stars like Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston. Is he going to defend the belt on AEW? Is he going to work more matches in NJPW proper? And what about the now-former IWGP United States Champion, “The Commonwealth Kingpin” himself, Ospreay? Will he jump to America in pursuit of what he worked so hard to earn, and if so, how will AEW handle that, what with The Elite one match away from becoming the AEW World Trios Champions for the second time in six months? Would Tony Khan really want to build up The Elite once more, only to spin them off into a feud with Ospreay?
One thing is clear; Omega-Ospreay II is the match all others will be defined against for the remainder of 2023. It had drama, stakes, comebacks, and a crowd that truly put the match over the top despite being fairly reserved throughout the first ten matches of the card. It makes sense that Khan would want to work the match on his own product, be that on a special edition of Dynamite – which is a bad idea – or as the main event of a Pay-Per-View like Revolution 2023. Heck, maybe AEW can push the feud a little further into the future – assuming NJPW is game – and bring the final match of the trilogy at Forbidden Door II, giving a cross-over audience a chance to watch Ospreay get back the strap six-ish months removed from his impending free agency in 2024. Though only time will tell what the future holds for Ospreay and Omega, AEW and NJPW took a match that could have made “The Commonwealth Kingpin” into a legit superstar and booked it in such a way that he could become the hottest free agent in professional wrestling history when his contract expires – an inspired outcome if ever I’ve seen one.
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