Will Ospreay says he spent the week before All In convinced he had damaged his own build, and that hearing boos in Glasgow left him ready to turn heel on the spot.
Ospreay beat Kenny Omega at Wembley Stadium on August 30 to win the AEW World Championship, then broke down at the post-show press conference when asked what his 16-year-old self would make of it. On Insight with Chris Van Vliet, he went back over the state he was in going into it.
“The week leading up to it was so stressful, and I kept doubting myself, because there were little hiccups in the road where I felt like I’d almost done an own goal with some of the storytelling,” Ospreay said.
The moment that stuck was the go-home Dynamite from the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on August 26.
“They were like, you need to go out there and cut a promo. Just before they started doing it, they started doing the what do you think of this wrestler, yay, what do you think of this wrestler, yay,” he said. “And they said Ospreay, and I’m not even joking, I heard boos, and I had a genuine moment backstage.”
He said he looked over at a photographer taking candids and had a real moment of doubt about what was coming.
“There was a genuine moment of, are they gonna boo me? Because once again, between England and Scotland, there is heat,” Ospreay said. “But I’ve never said that I’m an English wrestler. I’ve always said I’m a British wrestler. But there is always heat in terms of that type of country.”
He was working out his options as his music played.
“Just before my music, I was like, please don’t boo, please don’t boo. Because I generally think I would have just switched it and I probably would have leant more bad guy,” he said. “But then thankfully they cheered, and we just ended up riffing between us. But it still wasn’t one of my best promos.”
He said he got the lines in that he wanted, including a Monster Munch reference, but that the clock beat him.
“I felt so under pressure to make sure that I got this promo done in this exact time that I didn’t feel the words that were coming out of me,” Ospreay said.
The anxiety underneath all of it was about the split in the match.
“It was just adding more and more to this anxiety, that it’s going to be like 70% me and 30% Kenny, and I was so worried that the 30% was going to drown out the 70%,” he said.
What made it worse was where he was looking for reassurance.
“My only feedback at the time is social media, and it really played like a huge toll on my brain, to the point where I was thinking, man, I don’t think I’m going to be the good guy going into my own home country,” Ospreay said. “And that kind of broke me a little bit.”
The weekend itself settled it. He said the shirts around the venue told him everything, and a meet and greet finished the job. A boy had made his own Ospreay jacket, and his father told him what it meant to his son.
“You just think, man, this is such a magical thing that I never thought I’d ever have,” Ospreay said. “I’m a bit of a numpty. I’m barely good at English itself, and I’m able to have connections with so many amazing fans that have seen me from such a young age to what I am now.”
The year behind it is part of why the press conference went the way it did. Ospreay was written off television at Forbidden Door in August 2025, when the Death Riders isolated him inside a cage and stretchered him out, and had double fusion neck surgery on September 17. He announced he had been medically cleared on February 25 and returned at Revolution, wrestled Blake Christian in his first match back, and went straight at Moxley, losing to him at Dynasty in April. He then aligned with the Death Riders in July after winning the Owen Hart Foundation Cup, turned on Moxley at Redemption to make the save for Omega, and was world champion five weeks later.
Ospreay makes his first defence against Moxley at All Out on September 26. The match was announced on the September 2 Dynamite, where Ospreay teamed with Andrade and the United Empire in the main event and Gabe Kidd went after him with a chair once it was over. The Death Riders came out, Moxley sent Kidd from the ring, picked Ospreay up and handed him the championship, and the graphic for the match went up on the screen behind them. Moxley then walked away from him to close the show.
The two have met once in a singles match, at New Japan’s Windy City Riot in April 2022, which Moxley won.
