I hate this topic.
I hate that after basically a week I still see it pop up on my Facebook feed about wrestling. There’s been a Dynamite, a Collision, the Maple Leaf Pro show in Toronto, I’m sure WWE did something over the past few weeks (they usually do on Monday) and yet I’m still seeing talk about what Will Ospreay was wearing on AEW Dynamite last week and whether or not it is befitting of a superstar.
“It’s loud and tasteless and I’ve heard it before”
This all comes up due to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer discussing the opening segment of AEW Dynamite between Ospreay and Hangman Adam Page. I’m going to transcribe the segment here because there’s a part of it that I think the people supporting it miss.
“I think one of the things that kinda differentiates WWE and AEW, and it’s not a good one for AEW is, when stars come out for WWE they look like stars they dress like stars they look like unique people. Page it’s fine because he’s the cowboy that’s the gimmick. But Ospreay is a superstar and I just felt that um he needs to look the part of a superstar when he’s not doing superstar moves and superstar promos for that matter.”
“I just felt like that in WWE guys are going to look like stars when they are out there.”
Dave Meltzer made it a comparison between AEW and WWE.
You can see what Will Ospreay dressed on Dynamite last week. Let’s use some Wrestling Observer F4WOnline images from recent WWE shows:
So you have Gunther basically dressing exactly like Will Ospreay and he’s challenging for the WWE Championship. You got John Cena dressing like a toddler as the WWE Champion facing off against R-Truth on a post-show press conference and R-Truth has a tank top on. Then you got Jey Uso, WWE Champion, wearing a sloppy tank confronting Logan Paul in a sleeveless shirt and a tank top.
These are stars looking like stars according to Dave Meltzer and apparently Bryan Alvarez trying to address the controversy and back Meltzer up.
This wasn’t just about Will Ospreay in comparison to all stars ever, as some have tried to make it about NWA champions wearing suits when they travel. This was directly a WWE to AEW comparison on who makes their stars look like stars. Every example I’ve shown is during some form of promo, either in-ring or the post show press conference. Dave Meltzer was arguing that wearing a tank top is dressing like a star compared to what Ospreay wore.
I hope I’ve magnified the real problem here. I doubt Dave Meltzer was arguing that Will Ospreay needs to dress in a sloppy tank like Jey Uso, but in his mind? WWE is dressing like stars and AEW, specifically Will Ospreay, is not.
“Talk to me (don’t talk to me)”
I really didn’t want to get into this because I feel like not only does it distract from the actual major program between Will Ospreay and Hangman Adam Page, but it hyperfocuses everything on Will Ospreay instead of his opponent. You now have everyone (including me) coming out to defend the way Will Ospreay dresses, which is just going to make him even more the focal point of the program and Hangman more in the background.
Tomorrow night on Dynamite, the first subject everyone is going to be asking now isn’t what Will Ospreay is going to say or do. It’s going to be what he’s wearing. The blame for that, entirely, is on Dave Meltzer. Every single tweet or Bluesky post (skeet) coming off of Dynamite the moment Ospreay comes out will be on what he’s wearing and if he took Meltzer’s advice or if he’s deliberately defying it, which I thought Fats Falafel on BlueSky demonstrated perfectly:
It doesn’t matter if Ospreay changes things up or not. The attention is no longer on the build up to Double or Nothing and entirely on whether or not Will Ospreay is dressing like a superstar. It’s the worst kind of distractions a program could have. It doesn’t matter. It seriously does not matter.
I’ve seen all of the debates and all of them are a waste of time. We can name a hundred superstar wrestlers who dressed during promos in a boring shirt and pants. It’s done all the time. It’s still being done. It has never been an issue in the past. But now, with Will Ospreay facing Hangman Adam Page in the final of the Owen Hart Tournament for a chance to face the AEW Men’s World Champion at Y’All In Texas we have to focus on whether or not Ospreay is fashionable enough to be a superstar. It’s frustrating.
“It’s big and it’s bland full of tension and fear”
This is in every sense not what we need to be discussing in pro wrestling anymore.
There’s always a whine I see on social media about people making pro wrestling into something deeper and how nobody needs to do it. Of course you reading this on GrapPro likely reject that concept. Pro wrestling can be as deep as you want to find it.
There is however also something to getting too in the weeds. Not seeing the forest from the trees. Trying to find meaning or purpose in things that don’t really exist. This right here.
The way a professional wrestler dresses, it’s good to be aligned to your gimmick. If you’re the big scary goth wrestler you shouldn’t be doing your promos dressed like a rainbow clown. If you’re supposed to be high society in some ways your clothing should reflect it. Hangman Adam Page is easily identifiable by dressing like a cowboy, in both the stereotypical sense and the classic rancher.
Will Ospreay is trying to be the man of the people and he dresses like a man of the people. He wears street clothing reflective of where he’s from and he isn’t wearing something pulled off the discount rack. Folks like Dave Meltzer don’t understand this because he’s in his 60s. I’m in my 40s and I’m barely in touch with it, but I can at least do a little research on what young men wear in the United Kingdom to understand.
I think I’m most annoyed that if he just made fun of Will Ospreay’s hair like I did we’d all be on the same page.
My hope, and I know it’ll take longer than just one Dynamite, is that AEW is able to take everyone off the subject of wrestling fashion during promos and focus it more on just the content of the promos and the feuds themselves. Then we can discuss what actually matters. Meltzer was trying to make a point about something WWE does better than AEW and failed miserably. Ain’t the first time he’s tried and it won’t be the last.
No.
Beep Beep.
Trent & Mariqueen Reznor, Atticus Ross, with The Alumni Band – Fashion (Bowie Cover)
