Tonight, at WWE SummerSlam, Ricochet and Logan Paul will finally go one-on-one after show-stealing interactions at the Royal Rumble and Money In The Bank. Famously, at the Rumble, Ricochet and Paul springboarded off the top rope and collided mid-air, creating a moment that quickly went viral. At Money In The Bank, the two went viral again, but this time with a spot that did not go entirely correctly. While attempting to hit a Spanish Fly to the outside through tables, Paul’s foot slipped, and Ricochet had to pull the online star along with him to complete the maneuver.
Yesterday, I had a chance to speak with Richochet at the WWE SummerSlam media junket and asked him if the plan had always been to follow up those big moments with this one-on-one match.
“I know at the Rumble, you find yourself in a situation, and when he and I collided, I had no further thoughts,” he recalled. “Obviously, you hear the fans, and you hear the reaction of that, and you know, there could be potentially something, but I’m unaware of the future of what’s going on. For me, it didn’t start, really, until, like, Money In The Bank. After that, he goes on his podcast, and that’s when I was like, ‘Okay, well, you gotta shut up, bro.’ Like, what are we doing now? So that’s when it kind of started for me. But at Royal Rumble, there definitely, obviously, is something there between us two. But I had no further thoughts of what was about to happen.”
In the lead-up to this match, word began to spread that Paul was studying footage of Ricochet’s classic matches against Will Ospreay. The matches between the two were so athletic and fast-paced that some credit it with affecting the overall style of professional wrestling as it is presented today. I pressed the high-flyer over whether his match against Paul will deliver on the same level.
“I don’t know if anyone’s going to perform on the level of what I and Ospreay did,” he said. “I feel like what he and I did; we weren’t trying to create some crazy viral moment that everyone is going to talk about forever. We were just planning on me and Ospreay; we were just gonna go out there, take it to each other, and have the match that we have. He just is a freak of nature. You know what I mean?
“And obviously, Logan, in his own way, is an athletic freak. He does his own stuff, and I feel like, yes, comparatively speaking, Logan and I will go out there and have a crazy athletic contest compared to what you’re probably going to see out of a Jey and Roman or, if you know, those guys, but I do think between what he is capable of and what I am capable of. With what both of us are capable of doing, and I know he is crazy in his own way. Absolutely, there’s going to be something that’s gonna blow everybody’s mind, for sure.”
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