I am not a Will Ospreay guy. I have no animosity towards him personally - I'm not online enough to know anything about him outside of wrestling, don't know if he's mates with any sex offenders, don't know if he's a danger to society, might be the soundest fella in a sea full of deviants. Never met him, never interacted with him, almost certainly never will. Bell to bell he's a maximalist and my stylistic preferences lean towards the other end of that particular spectrum, THUS, we at Whiskey & Wrestling Towers (I am the only one here) spend our time (the time is mine alone) watching other things. But look, now and then a bit of excess will do the trick. And honestly, I didn't find this anywhere near as big and BOMBASTIC and whatever as I half expected. I figured they'd start with a parity exchange, a trading of counters and reversals that all look extremely impressive and well coordinated, a stand-off where they lock eyes and the crowd can register that they're seeing something very special and cool. We sort of got that and I didn't think it was stupid or too corny, though I can't quite tell you why and that is not a truth I wish to confront this day. It settled pretty soon into a story of Darby going for broke, putting his body on the line like he always does, crashing and burning on the apron Coffin Drop with a ludicrous bump. I've watched a lot of Darby Allin recently so I've seen a lot of ludicrous Darby Allin bumps recently, and this one was up there. For the next while Ospreay worked him over, drove his knee into the spine while yanking hard on a chinlock, Darby fighting back where he could but never being able to capitalise fully. I don't love the extended reversal sequences that Ospreay is very fond of (and very good at?), but they absolutely got me with the one that had Darby hit the Code Red. They even broke it up with Ospreay hitting a killer Hidden Blade, then when Darby caught him I thought he might actually get the win. Ospreay kicked out right at the death too and it was pretty much a prefect nearfall. They went even bigger after that, but there was no point where I felt like it was too much for me. The selling stayed strong the whole way and even in the strike exchange it felt like there was enough trace of hierarchy there that it stayed rooted. Darby is broken but he's defiant. Ospreay is maybe the heir apparent and confident enough that he has no problem being hit if it means he has an excuse to hit back harder. He's stubborn that way, I guess. For every three Darby forearms Ospreay could respond with one chop. It was fine. Then Darby went to take another significant risk, Ospreay caught him, and decided to put it beyond doubt. The Styles Clash off the apron looked gnarly and I liked that they gave themselves an out by having Will sell the leg. It meant he couldn't keep pushing right away and then they milked the 10-count all the way to 9.5, Darby barely hanging on. They had one last counter sequence that bled into Darby hitting the Scorpion Deathdrop, then his persistence paid off as he finally got to hit two Coffin Drops, which was just enough to keep Ospreay down. It was a good wrestling match. I enjoyed it, as I'm sure many others did. I mostly liked Will Ospreay's performance in it and in the future I mayhap, if the universe allows it, watch more Will Ospreay matches, enjoy them, and write about them on this very nonsense of a blog.
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