{"id":102051,"date":"2021-10-07T22:36:41","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T02:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=102051"},"modified":"2021-10-07T22:36:41","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T02:36:41","slug":"will-ospreay-mlw-fightland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/10\/07\/will-ospreay-mlw-fightland\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Ospreay Headed to MLW; Huge Announcement Made During Fightland TV Special"},"content":{"rendered":"

MLW made a huge splash on Thursday night as their Vice TV debut featured the major announcement that Will Ospreay was headed to the promotion.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Saturday, October 2<\/span>nd<\/span>, MLW returned to its recent home of late, the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, for a huge card headlined by the highly anticipated title fight of Jacob Fatu vs Alexander Hammerstone. The card was packed with great bouts, the return of the Opera Cup tournament, and featured the appearance of MLW\u2019s much-awaited women\u2019s division. But, what didn\u2019t happen live in the Philadelphia crowd was the introduction of MLW\u2019s newest signee, who is perhaps their biggest one to date. On Thursday night, as MLW aired parts of Fightland<\/a> for its Vice TV debut, Court Bauer delivered on the big signing he had been teasing earlier in the day.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/courtbauer\/status\/1446132960357462018<\/p>\n

Bauer\u2019s tweet raised some eyebrows, especially as he mentioned MLW\u2019s newest signee was someone a \u201ccertain billionaire\u201d was \u201ctripping over himself to undermine it.\u201d Of course, there are just two billionaires in wrestling, Tony Khan and Vince McMahon, and both of them have been linked to MLW\u2019s mystery signing in the past.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As fans speculated who the signee could be, names like Bobby Fish, Braun Strowman, Bronson Reed, Buddy Murphy, Bray Wyatt<\/a>, and Tony Nese were thrown around. And many of those names made sense. Wyatt is a hot free agent who has been heavily linked to AEW in recent months, Strowman is someone MLW had publicly been in negotiations with, and Fish was making his debut with the promotion as part of the Opera Cup. All good guesses, but all wrong guesses as Bauer\u2019s major signing was one no one seemed to see coming.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/MLW\/status\/1446301806729080850?s=20<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old Will Ospreay has been one of wrestling\u2019s top international stars ever since he was barely 20 years old. Ospreay\u2019s high-flying style, unmatched by anyone else at the time, catapulted him to superstardom, first in the UK, then in Ring of Honor, and then globally as he became a highly sought after free agent. WWE wanted him for their inaugural Cruiserweight Classic in 2016 but Ospreay turned them down as he had already decided on going to New Japan Pro Wrestling. In fact, in <\/span>an interview Ospreay did years later with Chris Van Vilet in 2020<\/span><\/a>, he expressed having no interest in going to WWE given the current state of the product. At the same time, Ospreay, the former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion, and 3x World Junior Heavyweight Champion, had expressed wanting out of Japan as well, showing interest in working fulltime in the United States. So, in September of this year, Ospreay made his debut on the U.S.-based NJPW STRONG.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to MLW\u2019s working relationship with NJPW, several wrestlers have been able to perform for both promotions including most notably TJP and Tom Lawlor. While it is unclear if Ospreay will be coming to MLW under those same conditions or if he\u2019s going to be a contract wrestler, it is certain that this is a huge get for Bauer\u2019s promotion. Ospreay is an incredibly exciting performer and brings with him a built in audience who will tune in to watch him each and every week.<\/span><\/p>\n

MLW has been gaining momentum lately and the involvement of Will Ospreay will no doubt move that needle even further for them. He is exactly the kind of name recognition talent that MLW needs as they look to continue to grow and establish themselves amidst a land of giants in the wrestling sphere.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MLW made a huge splash on Thursday night as their Vice TV debut featured the major announcement that Will Ospreay was headed to the promotion. On Saturday, October 2nd, MLW returned to its recent home of late, the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, for a huge card headlined by the highly anticipated title fight of Jacob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2418,"featured_media":102067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5283,12,6],"tags":[101],"class_list":["post-102051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlw","category-news","category-north-america","tag-will-ospreay"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}