Will Ospreay vs Marty Scurll (4/1/2018 New Japan)



"Ospreay wants to lead this division for years to come" sounds like a direct threat from Kevin Kelly to open up the match to me personally. Ospreay has toned down the Spyro the Dragon cosplay for his entrances. He's still decked out in purple but the spikey hood is finally gone.

Lets get into the good and bad of this.

The good, the actual big spots were great. I thought in his defense against Hiromu most of Ospreay's big flips looked like shit and were completely off the mark, that wasn't the case here (outside of one already well publicized near suicide). For all my complaints about Ospreay's actual selling the man takes some killer bumps. He's obviously fearless in terms of his own well being and does a great job at putting over the big moves like death right upon impact. I started to get bored quite a few times but through the whole thing they still managed to re grab my attention with something eye popping. The pace of the last 10 minutes was unsurprisingly exciting enough to wish the whole match was just like this.

Now for the bad. This was 30 minutes long. There is no universe that this needed to be 30 minutes long in. If you want to watch a lot of Ospreay patented "Grab a body part and scream in agony" selling you are treated to just that. I really think i would have enjoyed this more with 8-10 minutes chopped off but I found myself more waiting for something to happen then wondering what will happen next.

Now I don't think I ever would have watched let alone reviewed this if it wasn't getting hyped as the best junior match or rivalry of this generation despite Dragon Lee Kamaitachi being right there and much better.

Ospreay won after a second rebound cutter. It forever blows my mind that with all the visually impressive things Will Ospreay can do that he chooses to use that as his finisher, and after all the death blows of this match it couldn't help but feel a bit flat.
***1/4

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