One of the Best Pro Wrestlers in the World Credits Video Game for His Globetrotting Career
At their respective cores, there’s a pretty clear link between professional wrestling and video games.
Innately, both are escapist power fantasies.
In video games, it’s all about rescuing the princess from Bowser or chasing a high score, while pro wrestling is a constant power struggle on both a storytelling and meta level.
Given that, it should come as little surprise that there are some avid gamers among the pro wrestling community.
WWE’s Xavier Woods and AEW’s Adam Cole, as just two examples among many, have thriving online communities focused on gaming first — not wrestling.
But while some wrestlers keep their two passions separate, others integrate them judiciously, particularly in All Elite Wrestling.
One of AEW’s top stars, Kenny Omega, wears his fandom on his sleeve. He’s named both of his signature moves (The “V-Trigger” from Street Fighter and the “One-Winged Angel” from Final Fantasy VII) after some of his favorite video games.
But even that pales in comparison to Omega’s AEW peer — and a man considered by many to be the best pound-for-pound professional wrestler on the planet — Will Ospreay.
In an interview with IGN, Ospreay opened up to owe his entire, critically acclaimed career to video games.
Well, specifically, one video game franchise: The Assassin’s Creed video games.
Ospreay has modeled his look, style and move-set with ideas from the AC games, and discussed how the games re-wired the way he thought about professional wrestling.
“It opened up gateways in my brain with wrestling,” Ospreay told IGN. “It made me think so much deeper about the entrance [and] the way I presented and carried myself on camera. Without Assassin’s Creed, I don’t think I would be as far in my wrestling career as I would be right now.”
The longtime wrestler also opened up about how the unique look of Assassin’s Creed helped him stand out from the crowd.
“You’ve got about six seconds to win a crowd over,” Ospreay said. “The moment you walk through that curtain, you have to have something about you. Whether you are a freak, or you’ve got long hair, you’ve got to have something about you.”
Ospreay has adopted both the look (the jacket he wears to the ring is reminiscent of the iconic Assassin’s hoods from the games) and moves (like Omega, Ospreay’s finishing move is called the “Hidden Blade,” a reference to the Assassins’ weapon of choice from the franchise), but he’s even adapted parts of the Assassin’s Creed pathos into his wrestling style.
Will Ospreay getting an Assassins Creed entrance for his last full-time NJPW Wrestle Kingdom match is unreal pic.twitter.com/lRcDK8QJhw
— Liam Jenkins (@LiamJenkinsPSN) January 4, 2024
To put it mildly, Ospreay has an incredibly acrobatic wrestling style that involves all manner of flips and somersaults… not unlike the way that Assassin’s Creed often brags about its free-form parkour.
The lumbering style of Hulk Hogan, this is not.
Ospreay also brought up the escapism connection between wrestling and video games:
“We play video games and [watch] wrestling for the same reasons, to escape the real world,” Ospreay told IGN. “The real world sucks sometimes, but we have to live in it.
“But for those few hours we can have a little bit of a break from the real world. We don’t have to look at our tax brackets, we don’t have to deal with our governments, we don’t have to listen to people just spouting off lies constantly, and we can just sit there and enjoy something that we love.”
Ospreay’s career has spanned the globe, where he has shown off his unique brand of professional wrestling in the U.K., Japan and America, and the 30-year-old has thrived in all those places.
The Assassin’s Creed-inspired wrestler’s next pay-per-view match will be at AEW Dynasty on April 21, where he will wrestle longtime veteran and another man considered to be one of the best pro wrestlers in the world, Daniel Bryanson.
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