NJPW superstar Will Ospreay recently appeared on The Sessions podcast with host Renee Paquette for a conversation about all things pro-wrestling, which included The Empire leader opening up about his severe neck injury that he sustained back in 2021. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Says he got hurt doing a Shooting Star Press during his 2021 Wrestling Dontaku match with Shingo Takagi, an injury that eventually forced him to relinquish the world title:
It was hard as well because that’s the one I got injured in (match against Shingo Takagi at Wrestling Dontaku 2021). So there was a point in May, I had performed a Shooting Star Press in that match and I guess it was a little bit further than what I usually have but instead of my body hitting like this, my body hit kind of that and I kind of scorpioned. Not scorpioned, I don’t know, like a Cobra in a way and I felt this pop go off in my back and I never felt it before but I injured my back and I’ve had an injured neck for ages so like, by the end of that match, I was proper f*cking (unable to make out word). Then Japan did a mad national lockdown so I was just like, you know what? For the first time, I’m gonna take time off and I’m gonna go and see what these injuries were… I went home, I got it looked at, I got M.R.I.’s and I was f*cked.
Says he is proud of the match, but knew he needed to take the time away to heal his body:
I’ll keep the actual full extent of the injuries to myself just because I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business but it is one of those ones where I was so mangled and I could have gone through with it, I could have gone the naughty way of going about it but for the first time, I kind of was just like, ‘I’m hurt. I need to go home, I need to sort this out’ and I sorted it out and I feel like it’s a build upon things where it’s like, there’s a lot of mental pressure on us all right now, those injuries. It was so bad but going in there with Shingo [Takagi] who is one of my favorite opponents of all-time and being able to crush it for 46 minutes, both battered, both hurt and just being able to do it in silence, I do have a chip on my shoulder for that one. It makes me proud. I’m proud of that match so much.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling
)