Will Ospreay Flip

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About

Will Ospreay Flip refers to a viral clip from a fight between professional wrestlers Will Ospreay and Kota Ibushi recorded as a promotional video for the Wrestle Kingdom 13 event. The clip, in which Ospreay successfully recovers from an attempted springboard avalanche hurricanrana move, received viral spread in edits, particularly in those in which visual and sound effects from anime series are edited in.

Origin

Prior to December 15th, 2018, a promotional clip for the then-upcoming wrestling event Wrestle Kingdom 13 in Tokyo Dome was released.^[1] In the clip, wrestler Kota Ibushi attempts to perform a springboard avalanche hurricanrana move on his opponent Will Ospreay, grabbing his neck with his legs and doing a somersault. When Ospreay manages to recover from the throw and land on his feet, Ibushi slowly turns around and looks disconcerted.

On December 15th, 2018, Twitter account @GIFSkull made the earliest viral repost of the clip (tweet no longer available). On December 15th, 2018, Instagram^[2] user immortalwrasslinempire reposted the clip, gaining over 2,300 views and 530 likes in one year (shown below). Reposts on Streamable^[3] and by iFunny^[4] received over 71,300 views and 87,400 smiles, respectively.

On December 15th, YouTube user Michael Strietz posted a To Be Continued edit^[5] based on the video and its extended version,^[6] with the shorter version gaining over 297,200 views in one year (shown below).

Spread

Starting in December 2018, the video became popular source material for memes on YouTube and Instagram, with users usually making anime-styled edits of the clip. For example, on December 20th, 2018, YouTube^[7] user Blazeter Sergali posted an Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru version of the meme that received over 4.2 million views in one year (shown below).

On July 20th, 2019, YouTube^[8] user Erynith posted a Dark Souls meme that received over 3.2 million views in one year (shown below, left). On July 23rd, YouTube^[9] user SwooceBooce posted a Giorno's Piano meme that received over 670,000 views in the same period (shown below, right).