Swerve Strickland On Will Ospreay: We’ve Been Friends For Over 10 Years, He’s Grown As A Man In The Past Year
Swerve Strickland addresses his AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door opponent, noting that he has grown as a man in the past year.
Swerve Strickland addresses his AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door opponent, noting that he has grown as a man in the past year.
Swerve and Ospreay go back several years, and have met in an AEW ring previously for the AEW World Title. Now, at this year’s AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door event, the pair will look to earn their way into a world title bout at All In later this year.
While speaking to the Battleground podcast in a new interview, Swerve Strickland was asked if he feels AEW programming has been revolving around Ospreay and Swerve before discussing how Ospreay has grown in the past year.
“I wouldn’t say it’s much about AEW revolving around us. It’s literally about them. Like, I’m the one thing he can’t conquer in AEW, hasn’t been able to figure out, and I think that’s what makes this matchup even more special because we’re friends. Like, you know, we’ve been friends for over 10 years. Like, he’s grown as a man in the past year. Our characters have not been, like, on screen together in a year. So all these things have happened. Our bodies went through all these changes, surgeries and everything, his neck and him coming back to AEW like understanding, trusting his body. Is he going to be, is he going to be the same Will Ospreay as he was before? Like all these different things, challenges and things he can’t do anymore. He’s going through all these challenges, him becoming a married man now, you know, like his life is changing. So all these elements are just in the play as people before we become elements of like the competitors and all those things are going to come into play in the match. They’re going to come into play. Every time we interact and speak and talk to each other. There’s a lot of pent-up resentment to each other because of everything that happened. It’s more of a battle of ‘I’m the hump you just can’t get over. You can’t get past Swerve. You’ve beaten everybody in this roster. You’ve soared to the top, but you can’t beat me and you haven’t been able to beat the guy that’s backing you now in Jon Moxley.’ That’s another element to everything that’s going on, which is why I pointed out, I’m like, ‘dude, like, you have changed.’ Like, the competitive swerve in Will Ospreay would have went out of Jon Moxley. You know, we did that last year, and now you’re kind of just letting him just, like, have his way, have his Continental Title, and just, like, be whatever in the existing figure behind you. It’s like, okay. We’re not fighting for the same things anymore. Now we’re fighting for something bigger and for different reasons.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Swerve spoke about the evolution of himself, noting he doesn’t even know what that looks like. You can read more about that here.
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