Joseph and Colette Discuss Shingo Takagi vs. Will Ospreay
A trillion white ninjas in popular culture and this is the one we like??
Hello! There's been a fair number of new subscribers since BIG EGG moved from Substack to Ghost, so if you're new here, you may not know what the BIG EGG MASTERLIST is. When BIG EGG launched, each week was capped with a discussion between myself and Joseph about whatever we were covering. Eventually we covered enough that we joked around about the concept of turning those weekly discussions into a debate as to where those matches belong on a ranked list, which involves negotiating our differing tastes and opinions not only on what we watch each week, but what we've watched together over time. Through a careful mix of science and feelings, we've ranked them all, from El Hijo Del Santo vs. Negro Casas to Triple H vs. The Undertaker. It's fun and it's available on the $7/mo tier. This week, we figure out where Shingo Takagi vs. Will Ospreay goes. Without spoiling a lot, it's in neither of our top 10s!
Colette Arrand
In other paid tier news, there will be not one, but two EXTRA BIG EGG essays from me in the coming weeks that will be available to both $2/mo and $7/mo subscribers, as I promised to cover Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels from WrestleMania 26 if we got a new paid subscriber and we got several. So it'll be that and Ospreay vs. Danielson, with a Tam Nakano match I haven't chosen yet for the $7/mo folks, in addition to another MASTERLIST chat. Phew! We appreciate y'all no matter what level you subscribe at — if you like what we're doing but can't afford a paid sub, word of mouth helps a lot, especially as we're on a new platform!
NEXT WEEK ON THE EGG: We go after one of the most divisive rivalries in modern women's wrestling. That's right, we're Walking the Tam Road to see Tam Nakano take on Giulia in a match that promises to have a bell at the start and the end!
Colette Arrand
Dude, I’m gonna be real with you, I dreaded the prospect of this one match more than the whole of Hunter Month. I am, as you know, not a fan, my interest in mainstream American wrestling slipped further and further the more involved in AEW he became, which is what happened with New Japan as well, but I feel like my hating on Will Ospreay was something I mostly managed to keep in check, one article aside, as I could mostly ignore him. Then you choose this match for Hot Takes Month and my carefully ordered universe of Prime Time Wrestling reruns and the generally excellent stuff we choose to watch here came crumbling down. Besides the obvious — your opinion of the match at the time being contradictory to most — what made you choose this one? Was there a wrinkle to it that you thought you hadn’t seen before? Time granting new perspective? Why did you do this to me?
Joseph Montecillo
I just couldn't wrap my head around why people consider this "the good one." Even among Ospreay's harshest critics, this one gets looked to as a pretty good match, and I never thought that even at the time when I actually was quite enjoying Ospreay's year. That's perhaps something that I didn't cover nearly enough in my essay: I really, really liked Will Ospreay in 2019. With the exception of a dogshit David Starr match from RevPro that I couldn't be bothered to finish, I thought it was some of his strongest work ever, which means that I was primed to really enjoy his matches at this time period. And even then, this one left me cold, so I'm somewhat baffled it's the one that stuck around.