"I want it to rain doughnuts": Will Ospreay on headlining Wembley, ADHD and bringing wrestling's biggest prize home to England
The AEW star main-events All In at Wembley Stadium this August
Will Ospreay has spent a sizeable chunk of his life wrestling in rooms you would not want to spend an evening in.
"For years I went up and down this country wrestling in workingmen's clubs, in church halls, in filthy, filthy nightclubs with some very questionable people on the outside," he tells Shortlist. "I did it because I was so in love with pro wrestling... It wasn't ever about making money for me. It was all about getting that thrill and getting that excitement. And then when I found out I could make money, it was even better."
On 30 August, the Essex native goes from those nightclubs to the top of the poster at Wembley Stadium, headlining AEW's biggest show of the year, All In, in front of a massive crowd in the UK’s biggest venue. It is his third appearance at the stadium, and the first in a main event slot.
"It fills me with a lot of pride and joy," he says.
Speaking to us the morning after the World Cup final — caffeinated, cheerful, and armed with an early Starbucks — Ospreay is in the strange position of being a lifelong Wembley pilgrim who now works there. Ask him what image the stadium conjures and the answer isn't a wrestling one.
"Oh, honestly, Oasis," he says. "Oasis performing in Wembley Stadium was something that I'd watch on YouTube all the time. But there are so many other different moments in time like football, concerts, or just that iconic archway."
What he misses about the church-hall years, it turns out, isn't the wrestling at all.
"The car journeys with some of the people that I used to travel with," he says. "I genuinely had such a great time hearing stories and just getting to connect with people you didn't know you had so much in common with. It was always fun whenever you got a car full of Essex boys going up to Birmingham or to Cardiff."
He still gets the travel, just with better legroom and different company. Ospreay lives in the UK and works predominantly in the United States, and he and his wife make the trip together. "Nowadays, we sit on the plane next to each other and get the old Mario Kart out."
It wasn't ever about making money for me. It was all about getting that thrill and getting that excitement.
Will Ospreay
Coming home
He did watch the final, for the record, and he was not on Argentina's side. "I was so happy that Argentina lost," he says, of a match in which Spain's Ferran Torres settled things in extra time and Enzo Fernández had already been sent off. "I've never seen such cheating and horrible play — unsportsmanlike to a T. I'm so glad Spain won. ¡Viva España!"
The football framing is his own. At Forbidden Door (AEW’s June PPV), Ospreay described his match as his World Cup semi-final. England, as it turned out, didn't get past theirs. So: is the AEW World Championship coming home at Wembley?
"I don't ever want to say 100% yes, because anything can happen on the night," he says. "But what I can tell you is I'm going to leave every single little bit of me in that ring to make sure that I bring home the most important championship in pro wrestling back home to England."
Peak Wrestling
So we put the pitch to him directly: what would he say to a Shortlist reader who has never watched AEW, or who hasn't watched wrestling since the Attitude Era? Why should they buy a ticket?
"If you've not watched since the Attitude Era days, we have far surpassed those days with just how our athleticism and our in-ring action take front and centre spotlight," he says. "It's so important now to present wrestling in a sports environment, for myself anyway, to show people that there are different ways of telling different stories in wrestling.
"There are so many people now from every walk of life that get to come through as a fan and celebrate all together. It reaches out to different cultures, different races, different religions. It's something that bonds us all, and the fact that it's all going to culminate in Wembley Stadium is such a momentous thing."
He is realistic about the limits of a sales pitch, mind.
"If you're not interested, I can't convince you otherwise," he says. "The only thing that I can tell you is this is something that I've wanted to do since I was a 14-year-old boy, and I could never imagine that this was the dream in front of me. I couldn't tell you that this was it, because it was never done before. There was wrestling once upon a time in Wembley Stadium. It was in 1992, and then that was it. AEW has come along and has rewritten the book of what professional wrestling is, and if you want to give it a chance, or even just give me a chance, I think I might be able to change your mind."
Give him a chance where, exactly? If a newcomer were to watch precisely one Will Ospreay match, he wants it to be his 2024 Dynasty bout with Bryan Danielson.
"That matchup at Dynasty was something where I felt like I finally became the guy that I wanted to become," he says. "And to be in there with a legend that is Bryan, I think it is a perfect mix between the technical ground style of professional wrestling and the high-paced hybrid style that I was able to bring into wrestling."
Since we spoke to Ospreay, the Wembley main event has been made official, and it comes with its own back catalogue. He will challenge Kenny Omega, the Canadian who holds the AEW World Championship and has a claim to being one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. The two met twice in 2023, most recently at Forbidden Door in Toronto — Omega's home country, where Ospreay cheerfully played the villain and took the IWGP United States Championship off him in a match heralded as one of the best to ever grace North American soil. Wembley completes the trilogy.
Hidden Blade
Ospreay is relentlessly loud about British independent wrestling, so we offered him a hypothetical: teleport one current UK indie name onto the Wembley card. He immediately began negotiating for more.
"Can it be two?" Told he could have as many as he liked, he went bigger. "I mean, in that case, the entire EVE roster (Pro-Wrestling: EVE is a British independent women's professional wrestling promotion). But if I have to pick, then Lana Austin and Hollie Barlow. I get so much joy from watching those two wrestle.
"Lana especially, just because I feel like our careers have kind of been next to one another. When we first came up, I just really wanted to see her do well, wanted to see her get more opportunities, and she has just found this incredible partner in Hollie, who — they both know how to yin and yang off one another. They're brilliant. I love them."
Ospreay is closer to EVE than most, too, he helps produce it, and there is a Wembley-weekend plug ready to go. "It's just my brainwave. Of course I want people to come to see it over Wembley weekend. We'll be at Walthamstow in the Big Penny Social on the Friday."
He is just as keen to point people down the road on the Saturday, where RevPro runs Wembley Arena. "I had such a great tenure with RevPro; they were the backbone and the foundation of my career, and I'll definitely be in attendance just to make sure they're all doing everything okay. I just want to support from the sidelines."
Through the Curtain
Home-turf shows do not come with a ritual, or at least not a pub-based one. Ospreay doesn't let loose until the job is done — and he doesn't start thinking about the match until the last possible moment.
"For me, I just don't think too much about it. I like to think about it the moment I'm about to walk through the curtain," he says. "A lot of people do headphones before they wrestle; it just never was for me. I see how it can get people in the mood, because when I listen to music when I work out, it gets me in a mood for that.
"But for me, I like to listen to what the audience is feeling. Do they feel tired? Am I performing to more men? Am I performing to kids? Am I performing to women? I like to just close my eyes and listen to what the audience is kind of saying and what energy I can feel. In that way I can transform myself into whatever I need to be before I walk through the curtain."
And after? This is where the interview took a turn.
"Probably something sweet, like a bunch of Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts," he says. Pushed on a number, he treated the question with the seriousness of a man who has genuinely thought about it. "So that's an open-ended question, because what are you giving me? Are you giving me 24 hours to eat as many doughnuts as humanly possible? As long as you're talking Original Glazed, I think I could eat 100 in one day. I'm not even joking. I think I could easily do it."
He has, he admits, looked up the calories. "It would be astronomical."
Then, unprompted: "I want it to rain Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts if I win at Wembley on August 30th."
Beyond the Mat
Between shows, the wind-down is video games — in short doses. Ospreay is currently working through the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake in half-hour instalments.
"I only play games for like 30 minutes at a time, because it just hurts my brain after a while," he says. "It's very good for me to shut off. If a lot is going on around me, I can just put my video game on and blend into the background there. But it does something to my brain — I just can't look at the screen too long. It winds me up a little bit, and I think it's because I'm focused in so hard. When I'm watching a film, I just relax. But when I'm playing a game, my brain is so stressed out trying to complete some of these things."
Ospreay has spoken before about having ADHD, and the same hyper-fixation applies to the day job — with a much steeper drop on the other side.
"It takes me a while to come down from any type of wrestling high that I get," he says. "It's so difficult, because when you get so hyper-fixated on something, and then you do it and it's done, you don't really know what to do with yourself. You just have to find something that brings you down to a level where you can function as a human.”
Asked whether he has any advice for conquering that post-achievement burnout, Ospreay points to his family.
"Honestly, a lot of it was my son. Becoming a stepdad was such a crazy thing in my life that has helped out my ADHD so much, because it was a way of separating the two worlds: this is my personal world; this is my real world."
Working alongside his wife might sound like it collapses that partition, but he insists the opposite. "We're able to separate it very well. Sometimes things will trip you off, and it will impact your day at work. But at the end of it, we're very happy people, and we love our job, and we love the family life that we're able to have because of our job."
Finally, because it seemed rude not to bring things back to food: the ideal London night out. Ospreay has a shortlist of one, and he is fairly sure of the name.
"There's a place in Mayfair. I think it's J.W. Steakhouse. It's the best steak I've ever had in England. When you've had steak in Las Vegas and Tokyo, it's very hard to beat the level of deliciousness of that food," he says. "In fact, I might actually go there the Monday after Wembley, just to say, 'Well done for all the training. Well done for all that hard work.' Have a steak."
Doughnuts on the night, steak by the Monday. For a man about to headline Wembley Stadium, the post-match plan is reassuringly ordinary — but then, so was the church hall he started in.
AEW All In: London takes place at Wembley Stadium on Sunday 30 August at 4:30PM. Tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster, with standard admission starting at around £31. The show also airs on pay-per-view via MyAEW.
Skip the search — follow Shortlist on Google News to get our best lists, news, features and reviews at the top of your feeds!
