2016 winner of the Best of the Super Juniors, Will Ospreay, will face the newest member of Bullet Club, Marty Scurll, on the opening night of the 2017 tournament. Ospreay was the first UK born competitor to win the event last year, and will kickstart this year’s event on Wednesday in Tokyo. BOSJ 2017 will live stream on NJPWWorld.com.

Will Ospreay talks about the stacked 2017 line up, as he seeks to become back to back Best of the Super Juniors!https://t.co/XZUZCGSyMG pic.twitter.com/0OT6emYnXN

— njpw_global (@njpwglobal) May 15, 2017



Ospreay earned an IWGP Jr. Heavyweight championship match against Kushida for winning the 2016 BOSJ. Unfortunately for Ospreay, he was not able to turn his BOSJ victory into championship gold.

As for Kushida, he fell out of the title picture recently after losses to current champion, Los Ingobernables’ Hiromu Takahashi. If Kushida is going to get back into the title picture, he will need to a strong showing in the round-robin based tournament this year.

In speaking with NJPW’s English language site, njpw1972.com, Ospreay had this to say:

On his first tournament opponent Marty Scurrll:

“He’s in Best of the Super Juniors? Excellent! He’s so different. Like a comic book super villain. I have a lot of respect for Marty because we’ve traveled up and down the UK and around the world. To bring the Villain against the Aerial Assassin in New Japan is hugely exciting. We’ll take it to a whole new stratosphere.”

On how another match with Ricochet in this year’s tournament will go:

“The same way I did the first time. I go there, I be me, and we show wrestling is an art form. But the result will be the same. I walk in, and walk out a winner.”

On facing Jushin Liger in possibly his last BOSJ:

“Last year we faced each other in England and I dressed up as Liger, Liger versus Dark Liger. I have so much respect and admiration for him. If I could aspire to be anyone, it’s him. He’s a legend, but legends slowly fade out and slowly die. Best of the Super Juniors is a young man’s game and it’s my tournament. I’ll show him what happened last year wasn’t a fluke and I will hit him with the Os Cutter one more time.”