Kip Sabian Reflects On Backyard Wrestling Days With Will Ospreay: You Could Tell He Was Special

Kip Sabian recalls becoming close with Will Ospreay during their time as backyard wrestlers.

Kip Sabian and Will Ospreay are currently in AEW. Their careers have paralleled. They first met as teenagers, dipping their toes into the world of backyard wrestling in the UK.

Kip Sabian discussed his experience as a backyard wrestler during a recent interview with Sean Ross Sapp ahead of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025. Sabian also opened up about forming a bond with “The Aerial Assassin.”

“17. I started way back when. My initial dipping my toes into pro wrestling was actually in Ospreay’s children’s backyard. Again, a young teenager/child at that point. I used to travel to his on weekends, I would get a train which is about two hours, but we were talking about the other day. I found a route that I could take that meant I didn’t have to pay for the last part of the trip. So I would like I’d get a train from where I was in Norwich, I’d get it all the way to London, but I’d stop early at Stratford. I’d hop on an underground line, hop on a different underground line, and then hop a fence. So I didn’t have to pay for that part of the trip. I said, ‘Every couple of weeks we’d go in backyard.’ Was some of the best, but talking of prodigies, Will back then.

“I had my backyard company that I was a part of,” he added. “To be fair, I think the organizational skills of backyard wrestlers in the UK back then was probably way more organized than pro wrestling in the UK back then, I think, to be honest, like independent wise. Like we had storylines, we had individual federations and we would occasionally come together for what we would call an ‘inter-fed.’ So it would be like my group of backyard wrestlers, Will’s group of backyard wrestlers—the original Forbidden Door.”

This “Forbidden Door” world of backyard inter-fed cards allowed Sabian and Ospreay to get close and watch each other’s evolution as performers. Sabian says he hadn’t seen the rise of a performer as naturally gifted as Ospreay until Nick Wayne.

“Kelly Sixx, who’s a UK wrestler, he used to wrestle better than me. It was his group. We’d all meet together and do this like the Forbidden Door of backyard wrestling back then. Me and Will just hit it off and I got to watch him progress from being a teenager into the pro wrestling prodigy he is today. Then Nick is probably the only other person I’ve ever felt that about, you know what I mean? Where you can just tell that someone’s special.

“You can find some of my old stuff somewhere. There may be a couple of things out there,” he added.

Kip Sabian recently made history in London at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025. He and Killswitch lost to Adam Copeland and Christian Cage. Sabian took a pinfall after a Pop-Up Spear combo from the former Edge and Christian in their first pay-per-view match as a tag team in 24 years. Check out the full results for that event here.

Will Ospreay’s high-octane style in between the ropes has taken its toll over the years. He recently announced that he has herniated discs in his neck.  After the events of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2025, he’s expected to take time away from the ring. Learn more here.

Check out the full interview with Kip Sabian embedded above.