Ric Flair says comparing Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega’s All In match to his 1989 series with Ricky Steamboat is not a comparison worth making.
Ospreay beat Omega in 34 minutes at Wembley Stadium on August 30 to win the AEW World Championship, and the reaction online included a run of posts calling it the greatest match ever. Darius Rucker was among those who pushed back, telling one poster they must not have seen Flair against Steamboat. Flair then addressed it himself in a post on X.
“No One Has More Respect For @KennyOmegamanX And @WillOspreay Than Me! But To Compare Them To Steamboat And I Is Like Comparing The Mississippi River To The Pacific Ocean!” Flair wrote.
No One Has More Respect For @KennyOmegamanX And @WillOspreay Than Me! But To Compare Them To Steamboat And I Is Like Comparing The Mississippi River To The Pacific Ocean! When They Have A Great Match 300 Times A Year And 200 Hour Broadways, Get Back To Me! Until Then, There Is No… pic.twitter.com/UFqcgPg8Zs
— Ric Flair® (@RicFlairNatrBoy) September 2, 2026
His argument was about volume rather than quality. A Broadway is wrestling’s term for a match that goes to a time limit draw, usually a full hour, which Flair worked routinely across the territory era.
“When They Have A Great Match 300 Times A Year And 200 Hour Broadways, Get Back To Me! Until Then, There Is No Problem With Being Number Two,” he wrote.
He finished by pointing at how long his own matches have stayed in the conversation.
“You Are Great Young Talent, But Let’s Get Serious Kids! You Should Only Hope That You Have People Talking About Your Matches 37 Years Later! WOOOOO!”
The 37 years is a reference to the Flair and Steamboat trilogy of 1989. Steamboat took the NWA World Heavyweight Championship from Flair at Chi-Town Rumble in February, the two went roughly 55 minutes in a two out of three falls match at Clash of the Champions VI in April, and Flair regained the title at WrestleWar in May.
The schedule Flair is describing was the job as it existed then. An NWA World Champion defended the title across the territories most nights of the week, working a different opponent in a different building, and the hour draw was a standard finish rather than an occasion. That is the measure Flair is applying, and it is one no wrestler on a modern television schedule can meet, because the schedule no longer exists.
The counter-argument runs on a different measure. Ospreay holds the record for five-star matches under Dave Meltzer’s rating system, with 54 as of May this year, more than any wrestler in the four decades the ratings have run. He is also one of five wrestlers to have been given five stars for two matches on the same night. The first match on that list is a Flair match, against Butch Reed in 1982.
This particular comparison has been made about these two men before. Jim Cornette raised the same one after Omega and Ospreay wrestled at Forbidden Door in 2023, saying he judges every match presented at that level against Flair and Steamboat, and that the Forbidden Door match did not hold up to it because he found the work unbelievable. Flair’s version is more generous about the men and harder about the era.
Flair has been complimentary about Ospreay before. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported in 2024 that Flair and Steamboat watched Ospreay against Konosuke Takeshita at AEW Revolution, the first time either had seen him work, and that both were taken with it. Flair was said to have called him unbelievable.
Nothing in the post walks that back. What Flair objected to is the ranking rather than the wrestlers, and the line about being number two is the part he chose to leave them with.
Flair is 77 and last wrestled in 2022. He appeared in AEW between 2023 and 2025. The Wembley win was Ospreay’s first AEW World Championship and it ended Omega’s reign.
