AEW’s Kenny Omega and New Japan’s Will Ospreay Trade Shots Over PWI 500 Rankings

AEW World Champion Kenny Omega was named No. 1 on the Pro Wrestling Illustrated PWI 500 rankings for the second time in his career. As usual, the list wound up sparking quite a few reactions from other stars, including New Japan Pro-Wrestling star Will Ospreay (ranked No. 7 this year). Ospreay responded to the initial list by writing, “I’d beat up number 1 any day of the week and twice on Wednesdays…..just saying.”

Omega, obviously in character, wrote back, “Your promotion has been so ice cold since I left that not even Meltzer can convince his followers that you were part of any BITW conversation. It hurts me, bruv. One of you dorks should have been the guy. Turned out a bigger dog was my only competition.”

Ospreay took the opportunity to tease his arrival in AEW, responding with, “Last chat we had was ‘you need to be the guy.’ Since then you left we sold out MSG, sold more tickets at the Tokyo dome than ever before, and put on banger after banger.A pandemic put the breaks on & you know it.Open that door, let’s have this conversation.”

Last chat we had was “you need to be the guy”

Since then you left we sold out MSG, sold more tickets at the Tokyo dome than ever before, and put on banger after banger.

A pandemic put the breaks on & you know it.

Open that door, let’s have this conversation https://t.co/vOIpsUktdt

— ᵂⁱˡˡ ᴼˢᵖʳᵉᵃʸ • ウィル・オスプレイ (@WillOspreay) September 8, 2021

Omega’s interview with the PWI podcast also dropped on Wednesday, where he reflected on receiving the honor. While dropping his heel persona, he humbly admitted that so many other wrestlers were also deserving of the top spot. 

“To me, I wasn’t able to play to my strengths at all this year,” Omega said. “That’s what made it the biggest challenge for me in my entire career. I always wanted to, of course, try my best. I’m always trying to learn, trying to challenge myself and becoming the best, I’m very competitive in nature but I also don’t like to say that I’m the best. I’m able to accept that I’m not, and I’d rather someone else be. But when people bestow this name on me or they have this expectation of me, I never want to let people down. So if I’m put in a position where I’m a champion or I’m in a main event… I’m still going to push myself to be the best I can be because there are a lot of fans watching in that arena or around the world that have paid good money, even more so they’re giving up their valuable time execpting a main event level performance. I just feel so lucky that throughout this year that I’ve had a number of fantastic opponents that come from all corners of the globe.

“… it’s fantastic that, no matter how I look at it, I don’t feel like I ran away with it,” Omega later added. “I didn’t think I was No. 1 by far. I think the best thing about this year especially is you could have went in multiple directions and no one would have been disappointed. I feel that up until his unfortunate injury No. 1 could have been Will Ospreay. No.1 could have easily been Shingo Takagi, easily been Roman Reigns. Everyone had such a strong year.”