Post by brockobama on Jan 16, 2018 5:38:18 GMT -5
Yeah, Will is a uniquely unappealing wrestler for a lot of people, I think, the sort of guy whose mere presence will drag down a match or deter a viewer. I know he's like that for me. A huge part of that is just his personality mainly out of the ring, but it bleeds into his actual wrestling as well when so much of his work is based around selling him as this stone cold killer (PROGRESS, pre-tournament WCPW) or this endearing superhero-esque babyface (just about everywhere else), which are two roles I just don't buy from him anymore.
Outside of the emotive side of his work, though, kid had a good year. There's still so many things he does in the ring that annoy me, especially in regards to his selling, which continued to be a big part of his work in 2017. Yet he improved in other ways, most notably in his striking and his flying, the former of which got tighter and the latter of which got more sparse and restrained, comparatively. I thought his last two PROGRESS matches before the December return were rather good, with both being in difficult situations. The RevPro matches against Bodom and Taguchi struck me as surprisingly good, the sorts of things I didn't plan on reviewing and ended up reviewing anyway. Didn't love the first but the second KUSHIDA match in NJPW was the best of their series I think and showed a lot of growth from the young man. I'm not thrilled about his entire run in the tournament like others are, but the Rey Mysterio match from the WCPW World Cup was interesting, which is not an adjective I think I've ever used before to describe an Ospreay match. He's not gonna make my list but I can't say that I didn't consider him for a while as a strategic #100 and I sure wouldn't look sideways at someone for having him higher than that.
Outside of the emotive side of his work, though, kid had a good year. There's still so many things he does in the ring that annoy me, especially in regards to his selling, which continued to be a big part of his work in 2017. Yet he improved in other ways, most notably in his striking and his flying, the former of which got tighter and the latter of which got more sparse and restrained, comparatively. I thought his last two PROGRESS matches before the December return were rather good, with both being in difficult situations. The RevPro matches against Bodom and Taguchi struck me as surprisingly good, the sorts of things I didn't plan on reviewing and ended up reviewing anyway. Didn't love the first but the second KUSHIDA match in NJPW was the best of their series I think and showed a lot of growth from the young man. I'm not thrilled about his entire run in the tournament like others are, but the Rey Mysterio match from the WCPW World Cup was interesting, which is not an adjective I think I've ever used before to describe an Ospreay match. He's not gonna make my list but I can't say that I didn't consider him for a while as a strategic #100 and I sure wouldn't look sideways at someone for having him higher than that.