New Japan Pro Wrestling star Will Ospreay recently sat down with Chris Van Vliet to talk about his career, having 25 matches rated 5+ stars by Dave Meltzer, Kenny Omega, Ricochet, AEW, CM Punk, and more. We have a few highlights below but scroll down for the entire video interview.
On being tempted to wrestle at WrestleMania:
“Of course, I would love to wrestle in front of 80,000 people. Who wouldn’t want to wrestle in front of 80,000 people, but in the same sense, I’m not going to lose sleep if I never do it. I never wanted to get to this level of fame with wrestling. I just enjoyed doing it on the weekends and New Japan offered me a lot of money, and I was just like whoa, I can make money from this. WWE, TNA and New Japan were on the table at the same time and the selling point in New Japan was that I get to come home. WWE I had to move there, TNA, most likely the same thing and it wasn’t guaranteed money. In New Japan, I get to come home and I’m a real home guy. So the fact that I’ve got to come home was incredible.”
What would be his true Forbidden Door match:
“It’s probably Seth. After the little Twitter thing, it’d be fun, and he saw over right now. You see the crowd singing his song and everything. It’s mad, especially from what he was getting when we had our little thing
On possible match with CM Punk:
“Maybe. I have no idea what’s going on, but once again, I’m all about business and hopefully, it’s something that can work out.”
On if he would like to have a match with Punk at WrestleKingdom:
“I would want more of a paycheck (he laughs)I mean, now it is quite open, especially the relationship that AEW has with New Japan. It’s so different from how it was back in 2020. There wasn’t a Forbidden Door back in 2020. So now the relationship has grown. I mean Kyle (Fletcher) and (Mark) Davis are over there all the time now. Doing AEW was a real eye opener, like, how TV wrestling works and how like the backstage vibes and stuff like that. I was kind of like, okay, I guess this is like how the American side is now because my only experience with American wrestling is the Indies and Ring of Honor and Ring of Honor was just to do a really good match. But like this is all about camera acting and camera cuts, but it did make me go like, okay, there’s another thing to learn.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
