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Post by bossrock on Oct 21, 2018 19:51:57 GMT -5
For as great as Ospreay could be, he was always a very flawed wrestler. For all of his tremendous athleticism and high-flying abilities, he was self-indulgent, struggled to play a sympathetic babyface, and screamed a lot. However, this really felt like the year where he finally put all of the pieces together and reached his full potential. I don't think it's a stretch to say he's been one of the year's best sellers as his neck and upper-back selling was both consistent and great long-term storytelling (it also helped that he focused more on facial expressions and screamed a heck of a lot less). He also turned in some excellent babyface performances against Riddle, WALTER, and Scurll. His Junior Heavyweight title run was one of the highlights of NJPW in the first half of the year and practically carried the A block in BOSJ. All this while not sacrificing any of his impressive aerial maneuvers while more intelligently working them into his comebacks.
An easy top 10 and arguable top 5 contender.
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Post by anotherspammer on Oct 22, 2018 11:00:52 GMT -5
I was watching NJPW on AXS pretty regularly for the first half of the year and never saw anything out of Ospreay worth talking about but man that Matt Riddle match was something else and that alone is probably enough to get him on the bottom end of my list.
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patrick
New Member
Posts: 21
Pronoun: He/Him
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Post by patrick on Oct 22, 2018 12:31:07 GMT -5
The thing with Ospreay for me is that of his 5 best matches this year, he's the lesser worker in all of them. The 2 Riddle matches, 2 Walter matches, and the Hiromu defense at New Beginning were all great but it wasn't Ospreay that led the matches to where they ended up.
The resume is there, but it's going to be tough for me to rank him. I expect he's safely in the top quarter, but maybe towards the bottom end of that grouping once I take a deeper look into the guys I have in that area.
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