8 Reasons Why Ricochet And Ospreay ARE Pro Wrestling
7. Neither Man Is A One Trick Pony
Like all the best pro wrestlers, Ospreay and Ricochet are fully capable of mixing it up depending on the opponent they're facing and the story they're telling in the ring.
Both men have faced bigger men than them, men with contrasting styles: it’s what you do when you’re a popular and talented gigging wrestler. You end up wrestling pretty much everyone at some point, and you work differently every time.
Just because this tournament match-up features two perfectly matched men with almost perfectly synchronised styles doesn't mean that this is the only thing they're capable of. This is the match they laid out for this circumstance, in this situation, to tell the story of two very similar, driven competitors meeting on day six of a gruelling tournament.
Moreover, Ricochet/Ospreay isn’t just about flips and twirls. Yes, there are some astonishingly acrobatic high-flying manoeuvres in there: both men are at the top of their game and at the top of their field. But there’s also sequences of mat-based grappling, a few innovative submission moves tossed in to spice things up, and (over and over and over) some of the stiffest striking this side of strong style.
To suggest - as many have - that either man isn’t a real wrestler on the basis of this match is nonsense. Worse, it indicates that the critic simply hasn’t seen the full match, only the clips freely available going round and around the social media carousel.