Last night on AEW Dynamite, Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland confronted each other in build up for their match at Forbidden Door for the final of the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament. The winner receives a shot at the AEW Men’s World Champion at All In London 2026.
If programs were decided by who had the best promo in a face off? Will Ospreay would be losing that match at Forbidden Door in a minute.
That’s even with Swerve Strickland unable to talk about the hardest nail to hammer about the entire Will Ospreay/Death Riders storyline. All Elite Wrestling went from the Death Riders being an existential threat to the entire existence of the company. Now it’s okay for Will Ospreay, who set aside his dream of becoming AEW Men’s World Champion to stop them, is now fine with just buddying up with them in continuing his dream.
Swerve had to essentially swerve around that problem instead of going head on about it. It’s not just that it makes Ospreay look bad. It makes AEW look bad. It’s not just they accept the Death Riders now. The whole company celebrated Jon Moxley defeating Kazuchika Okada to win the Continental Classic back in December. The man who should be treated like a literal terrorist to the fabric of AEW was celebrated as a conquering hero.
Now you have your top babyface, the man who you are clearly about to establish as your top star, flirting with the Death Riders and getting saved by them.
We all know why. There’s a pretty obvious story being told. Will Ospreay is going to win the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament thanks to the help from the Death Riders, only for Jon Moxley to say thanks Will, I’ll take that title shot from you now. You owe the Death Riders, you owe me. Then he beats Jon Moxley at Redemption to keep his shot and maybe the Death Riders fight United Empire or something at All In London for Will.
(I will say, it is kind of funny to me that Tony Khan back in 2014 was critical of WWE putting Bryan Danielson in The Wyatt’s temporarily but here he is putting Will Ospreay in the Death Riders temporarily right before ascending him to the top of his company, but I digress.)
It’s clear to me that’s the eventual plan. Ospreay wins the Owen unlike last year, he beats Moxley finally after he broke his neck, and then he is likely to face Kenny Omega and beat his mentor to basically take the reins as the top guy in AEW. Basically establish himself as the new Kenny Omega for AEW, what Omega was to AEW back in 2019. It’s all about turning Will Ospreay into the defacto top star of the company.
So much so that Swerve alluded to it in his promo. He’s being expected to step aside once again for someone to be the bosses favourite. It was once Bryan Danielson. Now it’s Will Ospreay.
The question I have to ask on this… is this what should be done? Should AEW go “All In” on Will Ospreay? Or is Will Ospreay, like his hero AJ Styles before him, a good wrestler that appeals to those already watching instead of someone who can bring new fans in?
Ace of Bruvs
I’m sure for some it’s annoying for me to even ask. Back when he first officially came to All Elite Wrestling people wanted Will Ospreay to immediately win the AEW Men’s World Championship. Ospreay had to set up the match with Swerve Strickland at Forbidden Door 2024 and lose to get it off everyone’s minds for All In London 2024.
Because there was no Wembley Stadium for 2025 it made sense for the company not to go with Will Ospreay in 2025 and instead tell the story of Hangman Adam Page winning. The original plan was Darby Allin, but he went to Mt. Everest instead. An AEW original was the only person to really make sense in winning the championship from Moxley. It was all about someone stepping up.
For a lot of fans they’ve been impatiently waiting for AEW to finally put all the chips in for Will Ospreay to be the top star of the company, and watching MJF get two more runs, Darby Allin finally get his run, and even the Samoa Joe transition run felt like moving people in front of Will Ospreay when everyone knows he’s the inevitable goal.
I actually talked about how the All In London 2026 was the perfect time for Ospreay to eventually become AEW Men’s World Champion, but I didn’t see him doing it as a babyface. I saw him doing it as a heel. I thought his work playing almost antagonist to Hangman Page was some of his better work in the company. His arrogance and cockiness is a far better strength than his earnest aw shucks British boy stuff. I’ve felt that ever since he turned heel in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Even in this promo, while I’m sure in the minds of a lot of people he was being a defiant babyface, Will Ospreay’s responses to Swerve Strickland were weak.
Ospreay demanded Swerve give him a response to why he wasn’t there to save him (acknowledging even that Swerve was hurt) only for Ospreay to not even allow Strickland to talk. Doing so to go right back into a big babyface speech about why he’s just a blue collar kid trying to accomplish his dream instead of the hand picked future Ace of AEW.
And that’s honestly a major hurdle AEW is trying to get over. They are trying to do what they can for this to not feel like a red carpet for Will Ospreay when we all know it is. And every attempt is getting sabotaged by Will Ospreay himself. He can’t help himself but to be looked at like a golden child, given instead of earned.
The whole neck injury question is all about delaying his inevitable rise but we all know he’s going to overcome it. The whole Death Riders angle we know he’s going to survive it. The whole Owen Hart Foundation tournament we know he’s going to win it. The whole All In London main event you know he’s going to be in it.
It’s a tough situation for the company to handle. I don’t even think it’s a bad thing if something is an obvious result. It was obvious that Hangman was beating Kenny Omega at Full Gear 2021. Did that hurt the match? No. It was obvious back in 1998 that Stone Cold Steve Austin was winning the Royal Rumble to beat Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania. Did it make sense to trick people and not do it? No.
What worries me is not how obvious it all is. It’s about whether or not Will Ospreay can actually play the part.
Goat Only In Name
I just mentioned Shawn Michaels which reminds me this happened for him back in 1996. The World Wrestling Federation positioned everything just for him over everyone else. Bret “The Hitman” Hart was expected to lose to Shawn Michaels in an Iron Man match that was built to make Shawn Michaels look like he could outrun anyone including Bret. He wins his second straight Royal Rumble eliminating eight other wrestlers. It’s the Boyhood Dream that’s come true. Sound familiar?
Everything gets handed to Shawn. Bret Hart steps away for half a year. Diesel and Razor Ramon leave the company. He was the Inevitable King and now he wears the crown. And the people were… tepid.
Houses dropped. To the point where Shawn Michaels came to my hometown of Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada, a city with maybe 48,000 people at the time, and with a WWF Championship defence in the main event couldn’t sell our Memorial Arena out.
They pushed Shawn down everyone’s throats and by the time Bret Hart returned? Even the people who once cheered for Shawn were done with him. When he lost the championship to Sycho Sid in November at Survivor Series? The crowd cheered Sid for winning and booed Shawn. Booed in the Garden.
We’re 30 years since that time and now All Elite Wrestling has their own Shawn Michaels. Their own boyhood dream coming true. Their own Inevitable King.
I’m sure Will Ospreay sells a lot of t-shirts. He was fourth on the Pro Wrestling Tees Top sellers list of 2025 behind Hangman Adam Page, Timeless Toni Storm, and Kenny Omega. Do we have any undeniable proof he’s a TV draw in the quarter hours he’s in? Not really, and it’s impossible to gauge in the current environment.
What about as a draw for pay per view? Forbidden Door 2024 did 110,000-116,000 down from 140,000 from 2023. It did go up to 122,000-130,000 for 2025 with Ospreay in the Lights Out Steel Cage match main event but the champion Hangman Adam Page facing Maxwell Jacob Friedman should still get much of the credit on any increase. Especially after All In: Texas 2025 doing better in buys than All In London 2024.
The other pay per view main evented by Will Ospreay would be Double or Nothing 2025 which was across the ring from Hangman Adam Page. It did less than the year prior, even with one of the few proven PPV draws AEW has in Hangman Adam Page. I think it’s safe to say Ospreay is yet to be on the level of MJF or Page there. Fans would say we still need to see Ospreay given the ball. That’s fair.
What I’m getting at with all of this is that there isn’t really anything indicating the company absolutely has to go with Will Ospreay as AEW Men’s World Champion for any reason other than he’s really good in the ring and Tony Khan adores him. He isn’t the biggest draw the company has. When Maxwell Jacob Friedman is getting the title again we understand why. When Hangman Adam Page got the title again in 2025 and things improved on TV and PPV we understood why. When the company built the women’s division around Timeless Toni Storm is made absolute sense as she drew in her quarter hours, sold the most merchandise, and was clearly the best reacted to women’s wrestler. Aside from loud OSPREAY OSPREAY chants, does Will Ospreay top a single metric?
Maybe just being Top 5 in a lot of metrics is enough. I’m not against AEW going with him. You have to be constantly promoting new talent up top if you want to keep your main event fresh. You can rotate people you had on top in the past in and out but you have to keep it fresh.
My worry is just how hard they are going with Ospreay and if he’s capable of handling not just the pressure but the responsibility. And the past months, and the promo with Swerve Strickland? It really didn’t help me to have more confidence in him and AEW executing this.
Expected Elevation
I am not saying in any way I think Will Ospreay will be a failure as AEW Men’s World Champion. Or that I want him to.
I do have pause. He absolutely fits the mold of Shawn Michaels and AJ Styles before him. The extremely talented, extremely athletic, rough on the microphone but gets every excuse aw shucks superstar who people think should be the reason everyone watches but often is not.
I have no doubt in my mind that when Ospreay wins the AEW Men’s World Championship, likely against Kenny Omega in an incredible match that will be remembered years down the road, that AEW will get behind Ospreay as champ in ways they’ve never got behind anyone save for Jon Moxley’s first title run.
I expect Ospreay to get the most microphone time on TV. I expect him to win matches that elevate his status. Probably gets first quarter segments every Dynamite. I doubt he ever misses a main event of a pay per view because “something else felt more important.” I think everything will build around him a way you haven’t seen in almost five years.
It’s not that I want it to fail or think it absolutely will fail. It’s that the build up to this? The way they’ve gone up to this point? Does not inspire me any faith it gets to the finish line. I think AEW has tried to build a situation where the hero (Ospreay) has to overcome injury (neck) doubt (Moxley) and ghosts of the past (Strickland and inevitably Omega) to earn the top spot. I don’t know if Will Ospreay, outside his in-ring work (that match with Mark Davis was spectacular), has done enough to meet the situation.
Yet… this is professional wrestling.
When a sports team loses it simply sucks. It only gets talked about as the narrative to a greater story when they win it all.
Professional wrestling is a storytelling genre. If Will Ospreay gets absolutely everything handed to him to become the Ace of the company and fails to be their top guy? Fails to be the new Ace? Fails to be the franchise of the company? Fails to be the new Protagonist?
There’s a story in that as well. Heavy lies the crown. The man who accomplished all his dreams only for them to become a nightmare. If Ospreay is finding himself losing in front of the most hardcore AEW fans booing him as he loses the Men’s World Championship to someone he was supposed to be more popular than? You’ve just established an arc of where to go next with Will Ospreay.
It’s in AEW’s best interest this doesn’t fail, just due to how much of their television and how much of their company is building to this moment, but it’s just me saying even if it goes the way I think it goes? I don’t see it as an end point. AEW has an incredible roster of in prime superstars that could become that babyface superstar instead if Ospreay instead becomes one of the biggest heels.
One of them is the man who stood in the ring with Ospreay last night and absolutely dominated him on the microphone, to the point where Ospreay could only respond in violence. It wasn’t the heel, the “Most Dangerous” who struck first after being verbally defeated. It was the hand picked hero.
Remember that when Will Ospreay, the Inevitable King, takes his throne at All In London 2026.
