Will Ospreay on AEW’s Tribute Show To PAC and Him Hitting The Black Arrow In Tribute, His Belief Wrestling Has Evolved Past Needing Full Kayfabe Protection, & Potential Future Acting Career Interest

A recent episode of the Real Radio Monsters podcast featured AEW World Champion Will Ospreay as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Ospreay’s thoughts about the passing of “PAC” Benjamin Satterley and the tribute show AEW put on in memory of him.

“We had an unfortunate passing, PAC, and we had this memorial show, so we had to like cut all of our storylines just to dedicate a show, and honestly, if you asked PAC, he would have hated it. He would have been like, please stop it. One of the things that I feel like brought the locker room a little bit together is I think we were still processing something that was so tragic and so awful, and the one move that he did was called the Black Arrow, which is a shooting star press with a 360 corkscrew. It’s the most difficult move in pro wrestling. It’s so hard to hit. I did it eight years ago when I was like 15 kilos lighter. So it’s about like 30 pounds American or something along those lines. I remember I got to the arena at call time. I done my little video message. I came out and I got in my gear and I was practicing like from 2 p.m. to the moment the doors open at 6 p.m., and I couldn’t get it off the top rope. Like I could get it on the ground, but like I was so scared of doing it off the top rope and I had the guy in position and I can just feel everybody behind me at that moment, and I just busted it out. I felt like it was just such an emotional release for everybody because we all thought that maybe that move was probably long gone and never going to be seen again, and that was my way of showing my love to someone that was such a huge inspiration for me, especially as a British man. He was the first British guy that made the bridge for all of us Brits to go over to Japan. He was the guy. So to be able to give that to the locker room, to me, that means more than any world championship ever.”

Ospreay also gave his thoughts about kayfabe in modern wrestling and his belief that pro wrestling has evolved past needing full kayfabe protection.

“I mean it can still be done to this day and age for sure. It can be, but just like, I think, you don’t go into like a cinema. I like the Avengers and like Spider-Man and I love Batman. I don’t go into those things and instantly just go, well, ‘they’re not protecting the business.’ Do you know what I mean? I go into there knowing that I’m going to be sucked into a story and sucked into that universe. So like, it’s the same thing with wrestling. Whenever you walk into any arena that we do, we’re all characters and we’re all there to perform a show. Sometimes it gets dictated onto like social media where people act as their characters from there and they can cut promos there and it can promote over over to like different sources and different places but just like- I feel like wrestling has kind of evolved from that standpoint, like once upon a time it needed to be protected and I still feel like aspects of it do need to be protected, that’s why I’m not the biggest fan of the the backstage like stuff that’s being shown. I just think there are some things that fans need to see and some things that fans don’t need to see, and I don’t think fans need to know what time cues are. I don’t think they need to know when the commercial break’s coming up. I don’t think they need to be… Like, it just seems like one big ego fest. Look how amazing we are, the guys behind the camera. It’s like, shut up.”

Ospreay also gave his thoughts about if he knows Guy Ritchie and his interest in a potential acting career in the future.

“Of course I know Guy Ritchie. I’ve never met him, but I’m a massive fan of The Gentleman, and I would love to put my… I feel like I’d be okay at acting, but I’m not very good at reading. I’ll be honest with you. I’m very bad at reading scripts. It would be a difficult thing for me, but for Guy Ritchie, I’ll do it, bro. I’ll put my mind to it.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, & 3