Will Ospreay has revealed the story behind his memorable entrance at AEW All In: London 2026, including why he wanted his mother to provide the voiceover and how The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” became part of the presentation.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Ospreay credited AEW lead producer Mike Mansury with helping develop the entrance. He explained that the concept grew from an emotional experience involving his wife, Alex Windsor, ahead of his steel cage match at Forbidden Door.
“It was obviously helped a lot. Mike Mansury, he’s one of the lead producers for AEW, so he helped come up with it. But my whole thing was I remember last year at Forbidden Door when I went in the steel cage match, and I was trying to think of a real cool entrance for that. I was just like, I’d love it if I could do something there.
But I had no idea that Al [Alex Windsor] 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.
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.
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.”
Van Vliet asked how Ospreay approached his mother about becoming part of the entrance.
“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.’”
Ospreay confirmed that he didn’t hear the finished voiceover until the night of All In. He did, however, give his mother some direction after her initial recording leaned a little too heavily into her theatrical instincts.
“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 entrance also featured Ospreay walking backstage past several people who had played important roles in his career. When Van Vliet asked about the music accompanying the presentation, Ospreay revealed that “Baba O’Riley” wasn’t his original choice.
He declined to name the song he initially wanted because he hopes he may still be able to use it in the future.
“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.
But it was Mike Mansury that came up with the idea of The Who Baba O’Reily. I’ll be honest with you, I have a connection with that song because there was a music video from the MV Zone. It was like a kind of little backyard wrestling music video group, and they did a Bryan Danielson tribute to that song, so I have a little bit of a connection to it.
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.
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.”
What initially left Ospreay uncertain ultimately came together once he experienced the complete package, combining his mother’s message, footage from his journey and Mansury’s choice of music for one of the biggest entrances of Ospreay’s career.
