“Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing.”

— Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)

I like clichés.

Clichés get a bad rep but really, they’re just the simplest and most fundamental ideas repeated again and again until they become so instinctive that you can feel them shaking your bones.

Here’s a popular one: you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Wembley All In 2026 may mark the last time Kenny Omega features as the focal point of a main event. That doesn’t mean he won’t wrestle anymore; it’s more the end of an epoch of him just giving his body up for this beautiful sport. No more Terminator dives that hurt his knees, no more innovative bumps just to keep pushing the envelope.

Truthfully, I wasn’t there for Kenny’s rise. Nor was I there for his glorious peak as the supreme lord of the Bullet Club. But he’s so inseparable from the ether of 2010s pop culture that even when I was on my long hiatus from wrestling, his name kept coming up. Most of my friends, who for the most part are die-hard WWE people, swear by him. Imagine that. Kenny’s powers are so uncanny that he managed to burst the bubble of even the most conservative wrestling fanbase.

And he did it without really personifying a lot of the Vince-isms that dominated mainstream American wrestling in the 21st century: he wasn’t a big muscle monster, nor did he talk like a Chuck Norris rip-off. More importantly, he wrestled like somebody who had figured out that professional wrestling had more than one language. Kenny could work at a ridiculous pace, hit with real violence and build these enormous closing stretches, but there was also DDT weirdness in him, Japanese main-event drama, video-game logic, comedy and whatever else he had picked up along the way. He didn’t look like somebody trying to reproduce the WWE house style with a few Japanese moves sprinkled on top. He made a concentrated effort to combine all these different influences into something that felt distinctly his, and that’s one of the reasons he stood out. But that still doesn’t quite explain how he got so big.

ACT I

THE WORLD KENNY MADE

Kenny Omega spent the years when his mythology really started exploding primarily wrestling in Japan. He wasn’t appearing on Raw every Monday night and there wasn’t some enormous American television machine spending three hours a week reminding people that he mattered. Yet by 2017 you could barely hang around wrestling people online without hearing about Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada. Even websites catering heavily to WWE fans were basically saying the same thing: if you follow wrestling on the internet, you’ve probably heard about this fucking match already.

That is where Kenny’s story starts becoming very 2010s. The promotion obviously helped make him, but so did everybody else. Twitter clips, Reddit arguments, Meltzer losing his mind over star ratings, YouTube videos, Being the Elite, fan art, GIFs, match compilations and some lunatic somewhere writing several thousand words explaining why the One-Winged Angel mattered. ESPN was already writing in 2017 about how Kenny and the Young Bucks were using Being the Elite to weave an online show into actual ROH and New Japan storylines. Kenny didn’t have WWE’s machinery behind him, so in a strange way, the internet started building machinery of its own. It’s no billion-dollar marketing monster but never doubt the power of grassroots forumzens to snowball an idea into a movement.

Maybe it was also just the good fortune of technology and wrestling culture maturing at the same time, but Kenny’s rise came at exactly the right moment. The internet had stopped being merely a place where wrestling fans argued on message boards and instead evolved into a place where they could actually curate the culture themselves. Broadband was faster, clips were easier to upload and share, GIFs and fan art travelled everywhere, and social media made it possible for one ridiculous sequence from Japan to reach somebody who had never watched a full New Japan show in his life. The internet was no longer just a space for talking; people could really express themselves in more niche ways.

Thus it became a sort of ecosystem where ideas took form or wildly changed shape. An argument about the V-Trigger might inspire an online rock band, or Ibushi versus Omega could morph into an Ibushi-Omega fanship complete with chibi drawings. Some gamer might upload a 2K video of his CAW (that’s Create A Wrestler, you boomers!) Omega going toe to toe with Steve Austin, or a designer might poll reactions to his homemade Best Bout Machine shirt. All of these things became easier currency because the internet itself became easier to wield.

But perhaps the biggest indicator of Kenny’s place in a brave new world of wrestling is the formation of All Elite Wrestling. A start-up wrestling company with enough capital and star power to make noise in the American wrestling landscape. Launched by Tony Khan around Kenny and several of his closest friends, with Kenny himself as one of its centerpieces and selling points, AEW’s past, present, and future is intertwined with Kenny Omega. And no, this isn’t like TNA where there was some half-hearted sentiment to be WWEWCW 2.0 complete with the endless NWO rip-offs. AEW really wanted to challenge how people consumed pro-wrestling and Kenny Omega was, safe to say, one of their biggest selling points.

And that’s the larger shadow looming over this match with Will Ospreay. Sure, you have the continuation of their rivalry from Japan, and that in itself is already a compelling story, but the conversation of succession is inevitable given Kenny’s brush with death and the strain that wrestling at a high level for over a decade has placed on his body. The spirit is strong but the flesh is weak, and all that. Simply put, Kenny can’t go on the way he wants to even if he still wanted to, which is why this match is about endings as much as it is about continuity. Whoever wins this match must carry the banner of an embattled, post-Punk AEW and be the face of the company as it tries to hit a decade.

There’s a bit of hyperstition to all this, which is a fancy way of saying that sometimes a story gets repeated so often it starts helping to make itself true. For years, the same internet that helped build Kenny’s mythology has been busy imagining Ospreay as his successor. The clips, the many comparisons, and the endless arguments about who the best wrestler alive is: all of it turned an imagined succession into an expectation that followed both men into Wembley. Obviously, Reddit didn’t book Wembley. But the story was out there long before AEW made it a championship result. It’s a last will and testament whose fine print we’re only seeing now. It always felt like it would be Ospreay. He was the right age, one of the biggest international names of his generation, and he embodied the fast-paced but hard-hitting spirit that makes AEW so distinct from its competitors.

There’s also something to be said about the world in which he’s becoming a star. American wrestling is still sort of hungover from the nostalgic haze of a McMahon-written version of history, but Ospreay might be one of the biggest stars to emerge in a world where Vince McMahon is becoming more and more of a concept as opposed to the domineering flesh and blood that the previous generation contended with. Kenny can’t say the same. He lived in Vince’s world, and even in Japan his feats were often measured, at least by American fans, against whatever Vince’s WWE machine trotted out. It might be cliché, or even inaccurate, but Will really is rising up the ladder of stardom in a brave new world, and Kenny is on the wrong side of the calendar as far as the future is concerned.

ACT II

OLD ANGRY MAN

The match begins with a lesson, couched in a harsh reminder: to have something of value, you must earn it. Kenny has been gone for a while, but he has returned to honor AEW’s biggest prize by carrying it as champion and by appraising the measure and worth of his would-be heir.

It’s all there for those who can see. He comes out as Armored All Might, the battle-worn but still formidable All Might. Anyone who follows My Hero Academia knows that Deku does not simply inherit One For All; he must bend to it and be molded by it. It must fit him like a glove, but that can only be done by learning how to use One For All. Kenny is teaching Will that to be truly great in this profession, Will must be transformed by the suffering that comes with it. Even Bryan Danielson says something similar on commentary. He notes that a wrestler can only control so much, and that at some point wrestlers must accept that pain comes with the territory.

Kenny establishes himself over Ospreay, and although Ospreay holds his own for a bit, quite convincingly, Kenny eventually assumes control. He sets the tone early by making it clear that if Billy Goat wants to win, he needs to sacrifice something to the wrestling gods. In this case, it’s Ospreay’s surgically repaired neck. The last time they fought, Kenny was blitzed by a healthier and younger Ospreay, but now that neck, and presumably the wear and tear of time, give Kenny some physical openings to exploit that didn’t exist before.

A crunchy neckbreaker elicits the necessary contempt from the crowd. That’s one more thing I like about Kenny in this one. He knows he’s loved and that despite his heelish build-up people will cheer for him here, so he does everything he can to be reviled. And in pro wrestling there’s nothing quite as evil as trying to end a man’s career, which Kenny tries to achieve by attacking Ospreay’s vulnerable neck.

There’s even a beautiful spot where Kenny strips the middle turnbuckle of its protective padding. He then presses Ospreay’s neck against the exposed steel. That’s some good old-fashioned salt-of-the-earth wrestling asshole stuff. Danielson is right: this is a darker Omega we’re all getting. Fuck the lucky fuckers who got to watch this live.

It’s not all one-sided, though. Ospreay gets his licks in, and the exchanges keep Kenny’s control from feeling like one long beatdown. There’s far more parity here early on than in their Forbidden Door matchup where Ospreay visibly controlled swathes of the early game. After all, this isn’t the same Ospreay Kenny saw years ago doing errands for Don Callis; there’s newfound tenaciousness and grit in him courtesy of Jon Moxley. Yet for all his brilliance and all his otherworldly athletic gamesmanship, Ospreay still finds himself ducking gunfire from a Kenny Omega reveling in his depravity. In his final days, and in what could possibly be his last AEW World Championship reign, the Best Bout Machine rediscovers the malicious heart that made him, arguably, the Bullet Club’s most famous master.

That ruthless heart and fiendish mind really emerge when their fight spills outside the ring. The entire vicinity becomes Kenny’s dungeon, and he finds increasingly nasty ways to punish Ospreay’s brittle neck and beaten back. First, he boots Ospreay so hard that Ospreay comically whiplashes into the side of the broadcast table. Ospreay fights back and gets carried away in the moment, shoving referee Paul Turner to the floor. And no, that’s not some foreshadowing of a future heel turn, the guy’s neck is being pushed to the limit. Of course he’s mad and not thinking straight. That blind rage gives Kenny exactly the opening he needs to smash a monitor over his head. It’s a great karmic comeback. Back in their match at Forbidden Door 2023, Ospreay repeatedly bashed Kenny’s head against the commentary table; here Kenny hits him with a stomach-churning smack. Then comes the real bastardry: Kenny drags the now-bloody Ospreay onto the commentary desk and powerbombs him onto the other table. The fucking thing doesn’t even break. Ospreay just crashes into it and folds to the floor. I’ve replayed it so many times because the impact on Ospreay’s neck and upper back is gnarly. They’re really swinging for the fences with this match.

ACT III

THE PRINCE OF GOATS

“…And now, look at you. I admire you so much for staying the course and grabbing every single opportunity with both hands. Yes, you are a top wrestler, but more importantly, a top man too. The biggest and kindest heart, and are a wonderful husband, dad, son, and the best friend to so many. You were born to do this. You made it happen. And now, here you are, headlining for AEW, Wembley Stadium.”

— Sue Ospreay

Athleticism in wrestling should not be merely understood as the capability to execute “moves.” It’s definitely an aspect, but not the totality of it. Athleticism, for Ospreay, is the means and not the end because he uses his uncanny timing and coordination to improve other areas aside from offense. For example, he can sell the physicality of another wrestler’s move because he’s a very emphatic bumper. Watching him bump is like watching Wile E. Coyote crash into those murals of tunnels he always paints to trap the Road Runner. It has that jarring, car-crash, sudden-stop impact that Ospreay carries out so well because he has the physical tools to generate the acceleration or achieve the spin needed to give the action a more dynamic visual appeal. Just look at that spot where Kenny kicks him to the commentary table. The amount of exertion Will puts into propelling himself that far makes Kenny look like he has superhuman strength.

These kinds of exclamatory bumps do more than just punctuate the move itself and get the crowd going; they help sell the threat of Ospreay’s opponent. Because at the heart of it, wrestling is not a competitive sport. That’s not really possible given its predetermined nature. Instead, it’s a highly cooperative sport. It requires all the participants to perform their individual parts to a tee while also supporting the other person. In most of his matches, Ospreay brings the obvious things to bear, but he’s also a great collaborator because he can take your more standard move and package it as something so truly decimating that it gets the audience invested in his opponent. That’s what makes a great wrestler right there. Everyone wins when the crowd is invested in all facets of the match.

Therefore, to reduce Will Ospreay to just that “extremely athletic guy” is such a kindergarten reductionist take; that, or there’s the usual bad-faith agenda. There are plenty of wrestlers who are simply athletic without the accompanying attention to detail. What sets Ospreay apart from all the other freak athletes in wrestling is how he uses his physical prowess to inform the more cooperative aspects of his game such as his pacing, his aforementioned selling, and the way he makes sudden bursts of explosive offense feel natural.

That collaborative athleticism is especially apparent in Ospreay’s defensive wrestling. He has some of the best dodges and aerial reversals in the business. He does a lot of those wonderful counters here to mitigate Omega’s offense, and in doing so he makes Kenny look very good. Ospreay has the speed, the timing and the positioning to meet Kenny at his preferred pace, which gives Omega the luxury to execute his maneuvers to the fullest extent possible.

Of course, he’s not perfect. No wrestler truly is, but few have been put under the microscope quite like Will Ospreay. The arguments about him go beyond preferring WWE, AEW or NJPW. He’s polarizing on a more philosophical level. Fans who prefer a more traditional American style of wrestling look at him and see everything that’s wrong with the modern age: all that supposed flipping and no selling, and those fighting-spirit spots so gratuitously appropriated from Japanese puroresu. To them, he’s the harbinger of some malevolent wrestling dystopia where psychology no longer commands a premium and fights look more choreographed.

But the complaints aren’t all coming from people who hate his style. Even fans who enjoy this kind of wrestling have taken issue with how Ospreay sometimes puts the cart before the horse. There are plenty of Ospreayisms to complain about, but one of the biggest is his tendency to make a move look like it has just killed him, only to recover so quickly that you start wondering whether it happened at all. He’ll sell a hurt limb and then pull off some incredible aerial maneuver on that same limb without showing what it costs him. His bumping can be extraordinary, but the selling that follows doesn’t always live up to it in terms of consistency, especially in matches where his head or limbs are being targeted. Sometimes he’ll forget that those things really hurt.

None of that seems to be an issue here, where Ospreay is doing justice to all that wonderful blood. He’s never been shy about gushing red to add drama, but his selling does as much work as the blood. He’s swaying like a marionette, with the rubbery-legs bit mixed in with some punch-drunk boxer facial acting. It conveys how much punishment he’s already taken. It gets worse for him when he beats the ref’s count-out only to get caught by a running V-Trigger.

Then we’re treated to a harrowing, well-done control segment by Kenny. It’s a more traditional one, where Kenny gets into his flow without Ospreay fighting back. Omega attacks Will’s neck and upper back in a continuous stream of assaults, with the methodical pace of a man preparing a dish. He starts with a Snap Dragon Suplex onto the apron, adds a Terminator Dive for seasoning, then tenderizes the neck with a top-rope missile dropkick. A V-Trigger to Ospreay’s back follows, and then a damn Croyt’s Wrath from the second rope. Ospreay kicks out, but that entire sequence is devastating enough to rally the crowd behind him.

Will tries to throw a desperation Hidden Blade just to stop the barrage, but wildly misses. It’s a nice small touch that really signals how dire his situation is. Omega is relentless. Diving knees to the head, another V-Trigger and another painful Snap Dragon Suplex. He’s not taking his foot off the gas pedal. I like his rhythm because he’s not hurriedly going through his attacks, but he does move through them with just enough haste that he’s shifted from being sadistic to being tactical. He was just trying to hurt Ospreay in gruesome ways earlier, but now he’s honed in on exploiting the neck and back to get a win.

Ospreay finally manages to get a Hail Mary Hidden Blade in, and the crowd heaves a sigh of relief.

ACT IV

FIDEICOMMISSARY

Kenny Omega almost died from diverticulitis. I don’t know what that condition is, and to be honest, I only learned about it from my wrestling friends because Brock Lesnar also battled with it. It has something to do with the guts or the intestines. I really can’t say. Point is, Kenny almost died.

That sort of experience changes a man, and in his case, it also affects fans on both a selfish fannish level and a more humane personal level. As fans, we all wanna see more matches from him. We wanna experience more title reigns and more PPV classics. I mean he’s the Best Bout Machine, damn right we wanna be part of that glory and magnificence. But as fellow human beings, it’s all just fear and concern anchored by shitloads of love. Nobody wants to see another person die, let alone someone who brought so much joy to millions of people.

One can only imagine the fear and sadness and love and very small drops of anger going through Kenny’s head throughout his entire ordeal. He’s been through a lot of things, both good and bad, and in that window of extreme vulnerability, he looks at the world he’s built and how precarious and fleeting it can all be. After CM Punk’s departure, AEW, the place he helped make, has experienced a turbulent time with attendance and ratings. New Japan Pro Wrestling, his true home, is a shell of its former self. Everything is a sand castle on the shores of time, and his body is a testament to that. But fortunately for him, his brush with death gave him a new lease on life. Fading but still fearsome, the God of Pro Wrestling has but one last quest: to save the world entire and to pass on his mantle as All Might to a noble and worthy successor.

If Kenny is looking for someone worthy of inheriting his mantle, the poor bastard standing across from him can barely keep himself upright. Ospreay’s comeback begins in earnest, but it’s one done in installments, which is a breath of fresh air because I find Ospreay comebacks to be sometimes too eager and joyous at the expense of all the accumulated damage Billy Goat supposedly suffered. Not the case here. Sure, he hits Kenny with some nasty kicks and some heinous elbows, but look at him between strikes. He’s stumbling about with that glazed, foggy stare, presumably from all the blood loss and blows to the head. The offense comes in sudden bursts, and then there’s that little moment where he has to gather himself again. Even when he manages another desperate Hidden Blade, Omega gets to hit him back. Every time it looks like he’s finally got something going, Omega does just enough to keep the match from slipping through his bloody fingers.

That’s what I like about the rhythm of this comeback. It’s patient and dragging, punctuated by explosions of offense born out of utter necessity. Ospreay isn’t suddenly back to full strength just because the match has reached the part where the babyface is supposed to fight back. He has to fight for every little opening, and even his successes seem to take something out of him. He lands the Styles Clash, a pretty impressive feat considering the beating he’s taken, but he’s visibly drained afterward. When he goes for the OsCutter, that sapped vitality makes him just a step slower, and against Kenny Omega that’s all the difference in the world. Kenny has the split second he needs to intercept him with a knee. It’s a beautiful little bit of wrestling because the counter is made possible by Ospreay’s fatigue and Omega’s gut instinct blindly guiding him at that point. It flows as a consequence of all the slugging we see Ospreay go through earlier. It’s a great comeback because he’s bleeding for every inch of it.

The One-Winged Angel is one of the most protected finishers in wrestling. More protected than the Stunner, the Atomic Leg Drop, or any other famous holy weapon. Before Wembley, only Kota Ibushi had kicked out of Kenny Omega’s One-Winged Angel cleanly. MJF technically managed it at Dynasty earlier in 2026, but only after a referee delay gave him ample time to recover. In the rare instances where the move failed to lead to victory, fate generally cast a trick to preserve its divine splendor: interference, a rope break, or a delayed count.

One can only imagine Kenny’s sweet feeling of inevitable victory as he readies Will for it, and the collective breath held across Wembley when he hits it clean. Even the Billy Goat must tremble before God’s thunder and lightning. I spoke of the world Kenny fashioned, the very world in which he’s now warring with Ospreay. That world was built with the fire of a hundred weeping One-Winged Angels. That finisher, that god-forged relic of pro-wrestling, takes its name from the music accompanying Sephiroth’s final, godlike incarnation in Final Fantasy VII. Kenny took the dreadful inevitability of a video-game final boss and turned it into the final word in a wrestling match. It has become part of 2010s wrestling lore, a fitting monument to the generation of wrestlers who grew up on video games and films and found ways to distill their mythologies into the language of pro-wrestling.

And then comes the sudden, maddening flood of shock and delight and rapture when Will Ospreay kicks out of one.

There’s a rather important distinction to be made here, because Will Ospreay isn’t the first man to survive God’s divine judgment. That honor belongs to Kota Ibushi, and anybody familiar with the Golden Lovers knows that Ibushi occupies a very different place in Kenny Omega’s mythology. They were partners and rivals and, in the wonderfully romantic language of their story, lovers. The relationship they presented to the world was one of the great love stories in professional wrestling. A modern love story for the 2010s in a sport dominated by more atavistic notions of what it means to be a man. Ibushi knew Kenny before the God of Pro Wrestling had fully ascended to his throne. He was there when the foundations of that kingdom were still being laid, and in many ways helped lay them himself. If Ibushi’s survival of the One-Winged Angel felt like an exception made for love, it was because he stood outside the ordinary hierarchy of Kenny’s world. They were friends to some and lovers to others but their time together was universally a great time for New Japan and pro wrestling in general. Until Wembley, the only man to kick out of Kenny’s One-Winged Angel cleanly was the only man God ever loved. And then there is the Son.

Ospreay, on the other hand, belongs to the world after. He’s one of the great products of the wrestling culture Kenny helped bring into existence, a culture that absorbed the excesses of Japanese wrestling, the theatricality of video games, and the astonishing athletic possibilities of the modern independent scene, and somehow turned all of that into a language worthy of main eventing Wembley Stadium. He’s spent much of his career being compared to Kenny, chasing the same heights and enduring the same accusations of excess, and now here he is, battered and bloodied and barely conscious, refusing to stay down after the one move that was supposed to settle the matter forever. Ibushi was Kenny’s equal in a story that helped make Kenny who he was. Ospreay, however, is something much more frightening: a fledgling demi-god born in the world Kenny created, now come to claim his inheritance from his father. By blood if necessary.

But what exactly has he inherited? Certainly not the championship, at least not yet. Kenny is still standing, and Will still has to find some way to put the stubborn old bastard down. I don’t think the kickout is a coronation so much as a declaration of worthiness. For years, the One-Winged Angel has been the great, immovable law of Kenny Omega’s wrestling universe. You could fight God, you could bloody him, you could come agonizingly close to defeating him, but once he brought that terrible weapon down upon you, your story was finished. Ospreay by kicking out has just demonstrated that the law no longer holds sway. He has earned the right to imagine a future beyond Kenny Omega, and that’s a much stranger inheritance than a championship belt. The whole point of building a world, after all, is that somebody else might eventually get to live in it while God rests on a Sunday.

And then Ospreay does something wonderfully audacious. He takes fire from God and waves it around in the dark. He hits Kenny with Kenny’s own One-Winged Angel. It’s an astonishing little act of theft, or perhaps an act of homage, depending on how generously you’re feeling toward the Billy Goat. Having survived the old god’s greatest weapon, Will now tries to wield it himself. But Kenny kicks out at one. ONE! There’s something almost offended about the response, like God catching man bite from fruit forbidden. How dare thee? Study my matches, learn my techniques, but thou shalt not take my finisher in vain. Kenny is pissed now, and the home crowd must acknowledge an irate deity.

Even the Stormbreaker fails to finish him, with Kenny once again kicking out at one. There’s a marvelous, almost unreasonable defiance in that. He’s a man whose body has already reminded him, in the cruelest possible fashion, that he isn’t immortal, yet here he is insisting otherwise in front of tens of thousands of people. Maybe there’s a little selfishness in that insistence. Maybe the god doesn’t particularly want to stop being God just because the next generation has arrived. I find that much more human, and much more moving, than the image of some gracious old tai chi mentor happy that his student surpassed him. This is pro fucking wrestling. It’s blood and violence and egomaniacal ambition; no one gets a pass here.

And so it comes down to the Hidden Blade. The same vicious elbow that earlier bought Ospreay a few desperate seconds of survival now becomes the weapon that finally ends Kenny Omega’s reign. How fitting that, for all the borrowed mythology, the god-forged relics, and the elaborate attempts to conquer Kenny on his own terms, Ospreay leans on his own identity for the win. He doesn’t need to become another Kenny Omega, nor should he want to. Inheritance is something transmitted upon death, and to be the God of Pro Wrestling, you need to kill the God of Pro Wrestling.

CODA

I said at the beginning that I like clichés. I particularly like that old one about not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone, because there’s an awful lot of truth there. But sometimes you know exactly what you’ve got because it very nearly went away. Kenny Omega’s brush with death makes it impossible for me to watch this match without thinking about all the things that might never have happened, all the matches we might never have seen, all the little moments of joy that could so easily have been stolen from us. I don’t know how many more great matches Kenny has left in him, and I certainly don’t want to pretend that surviving a serious illness obliges him to give us any. The selfish wrestling fan in me wants another Okada, another Ospreay, another glorious Best Bout Machine run. I never got to savor that era myself, unlike my friends and cousins, who lived through it and never shut up about it. But the more reasonable human being in me would simply like him to be alive and happy. Both feelings can exist at once, even if one of them occasionally makes me feel like an asshole.

That’s partly why I find the ending so beautiful. There’s a terrible sadness in realizing that the things we build will eventually go on without us. The sandcastles get washed away, the bodies wear down, the promotions rise and fall, and even the greatest wrestler in the world must eventually confront the possibility that the world no longer needs him to be its greatest wrestler. Look around, Kenny. Ibushi is now just a face on your screen giving recovery updates. Okada is there, but he kinda isn’t? Certainly not the warlord that held the IWGP title with an iron fist. Shinsuke? surfing. The Ace, Tanahashi? running the next generation of Lions. Even the Bullet Club itself was put out to pasture. Things change and give way to newer things. But there’s a tremendous consolation in it, too. Kenny helped build a world in which Will Ospreay could become Will Ospreay, and now that world has grown large enough to accommodate a future beyond Kenny himself.

And I think that’s why the match earns every one of its thirty-four minutes and twenty-five seconds. All the horrible work Kenny does on Will’s neck, the blood gushing, the desperate little bursts of offense, the fatigue that turns an OsCutter into an invitation for a knee to the face, the impossible kickout, and that final Hidden Blade aren’t merely a display of the impressive things both men can do. They accumulate and tell a story. The punishment makes the comeback difficult, the difficult comeback makes the survival miraculous, and the miraculous survival makes the victory sweeter than the usual business of deciding who gets to carry around the big belt. I can watch a thousand spectacular wrestling moves and forget most of them by next Tuesday. What stays with me here is the feeling that I’ve watched two people tell me something about being great and letting go of greatness, about life, death, and moving on in this beautiful sport.

And perhaps the most comforting thing about this particular story is that Kenny doesn’t actually have to disappear for his legacy to mean something. He’s still here. All Might gets to see the next generation rise. He might still fuck around in a few other promotions or do a few more PPVs in AEW. The old god gets to discover that his world will endure without his constant intervention. And we, the lucky, greedy bastards watching from the cheap seats and our couches, get to enjoy Kenny Omega while we still have him.

This is Will Ospreay’s world now, Kenny, so we bid you adieu—mwah—goodbye, and good night. BANG!

★★★★★ — 5.0 — Generational Classic