Will Ospreay’s All In entrance became one of the most emotional parts of AEW’s night at Wembley, but even he didn’t know exactly what he was going to hear when it started. Ospreay deliberately waited until the night of the show to hear his mother’s voiceover for the first time.
While speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Ospreay explained how the entrance came together and credited AEW lead producer Mike Mansury with helping develop it. The idea for using someone close to him on the voiceover actually went back to Forbidden Door the previous year, when Alex Windsor recorded one before Ospreay entered a steel cage match.
Ospreay was already dealing with a neck issue at the time and admitted there was more fear behind the scenes than he was showing publicly. Windsor’s message ended up hitting him at exactly the right moment.
“But I had no idea that Al put down a voiceover for that entrance. It stuck with me because it was scary going into a steel cage match, knowing that I needed neck surgery, and I was just so worried. I kept a real straight face with people, and I was confident in a lot of the things that I was doing in there, but then hearing Al’s voice come through, the line that got me was, ‘If you’re not afraid of what’s next, neither am I.’ It hit me so hard. It made me just feel like I could run through a wall.”
Ospreay wanted to recreate that feeling at Wembley, only this time with his mother. For him, the choice was deeply personal. Ospreay left home at 22 after signing with New Japan Pro Wrestling, meaning his mother spent a large portion of his career watching her son grow up as a wrestler through a television screen.
“Then to have that feeling, I was just kind of like, I want my mum to do my next one, just because my mum has seen me grow up through a TV screen. When I was 22 years old, I got signed to New Japan, and although I kept coming back to England, and I get those tours, but a lot of it was like downtime and rest because I was so battered and hurt.”
With All In giving him one of the biggest nights of his career in his home country, Ospreay wanted the entrance to become his way of showing his mother what her support meant to him.
“I think it was just one of these things where I’d love to show my mum how much she really meant to me, and I’d love to have had her do the voiceover for one of the biggest nights of my life.”
Ospreay eventually approached his mother about it while they were in Orlando. She didn’t need much convincing and was ready to start immediately, but Ospreay gave her one important instruction: he didn’t want to hear the finished message beforehand.
“We were in Orlando, and I said, ‘Mom, I’ve got like a proposition for you. Do you remember the one that Al did for me? I’d like you to do one for me.’ She was just like, ‘I’ll do it now.’ Then she started writing it up. I said, ‘I don’t want to hear it until the night.’”
That meant the first time Ospreay heard the voiceover was on the night of All In. There was still one small adjustment needed before it was ready. Ospreay joked that his mother’s theater background initially made the recording sound a little more like she was addressing an entire town than speaking directly to her son.
“So I heard it the night of, and there were elements of it where I was kind of like, okay. My mom’s very theater, so she very much pronounces everything that she says, and she treats it like a town hall meeting, and I had to try and tell her, ‘Hey, just rein it back a little bit. I don’t want you talking to everybody. You’re not at town hall. You’re talking to your son.’ She did it again. It was spot on, perfect.”
The music behind the entrance almost sounded completely different too. Ospreay revealed that there was another song he originally wanted AEW to use, but they couldn’t secure the licensing. He refused to name it because he still hopes he might be able to use it somewhere down the road.
“There was a song that we wanted, but we just couldn’t get a license fee for it. I won’t put it out there because maybe one of these days I will be able to track it down again. I’d like to leave that as a surprise.”
It was Mansury who suggested The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” Ospreay had a personal connection to the song through an old Bryan Danielson tribute video and liked that The Who were British, but he still wasn’t immediately sold.
“I was just okay, I quite like the idea and The Who is British as well, so that’s kind of cool. But I remember listening to it and on the travels that me and Al did, and I was just like, I don’t know if I feel it. The other song that I wanted got my juices flowing. It was my favorite song.”
Then he finally saw everything together. The voiceover, the footage and the music changed his mind immediately.
“I don’t know if I feel it. It was only when I heard the voiceover and I saw the clips that were all around it. I was like, this is perfect. This is it. Don’t change a thing.”
Dave Meltzer previously reported that Tony Khan and Ospreay were heavily involved in shaping the Wembley presentation, while Mansury and AEW’s production team helped bring everything together. The entrance also featured people from different stages of Ospreay’s career before he walked into the stadium for his AEW World Championship match against Kenny Omega.
Now Ospreay has filled in the most personal part of how it happened. The voice he heard before one of the biggest matches of his life belonged to the woman who had spent years watching his career from afar, and Ospreay made sure he experienced her message for the first time at Wembley just like everyone else.
What did you think of Will Ospreay’s All In entrance, and did his mother’s voiceover make the moment hit harder for you? Let us know in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
