Since its inception last year, Forbidden Door has very quickly become my favorite time of the year for wrestling, more so than Mania weekend. Forbidden Door offers me and a lot of other fans the opportunity to watch wrestlers from NJPW without staying up until 3AM EST to start watching a PPV, and without having to hide away from social media to avoid spoilers trying to watch the replay. I have a lot of love for NJPW and Forbidden Door offers an easy, accessible way to watch their talent in action at a reasonable time.
Since last year’s event, the whole “Forbidden Door” has never been fully closed. Someone left the door open a tiny bit allowing Katsoyuri Shibata through to become Ring of Honor Pure champion and have an incredible run stateside, while still working as a trainer with NJPW. Outside of that, however, only a few wrestlers like Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley, Tomohiro Ishii, and Eddie Kingston pop back and forth between promotions on a regular basis. Big names like Okada and Tanahashi, though, only really come over to AEW for the big show. Speaking of Tanahashi, let’s get right into it with:
AEW World Championship: MJF vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
I absolutely love MJF’s title run thus far. I know he can be divisive amongst certain groups online, but when the bell rings, he delivers. Tanahashi, despite his knees being shot, still has the juice. He may be a fraction as athletic as he was 10 years ago, but the vibes are still there. He still feels like a big deal and therefore he is still a big deal. This does translate to whoever is on the other side doing a ton of work, though.
Luckily, MJF can step up the plate easily in that regard. He works as a very classic heel, with blatant contempt for the fans and even the match in general. His persona plays so well off of Tanahashi’s, who is over simply for being there. One early spot in particular sticks out, when MJF leaves the ring only to be goaded back in by Tanahashi with the whole arena behind him calling Friedman a coward, which is what goaded him into the match to begin with.
Now you might go “that’s a lot of talk about vibes, what about the actual wrestling” and the answer to that is, it was alright. Tanahashi played the hits while Max got some offense in, pretty standard fare for a lot of more recent Tanahashi matches. When you put Tanahashi against a guy like Swerve Strickland, who faced off on the Collision before the show, it’s obvious how much they have to slow down their usually quick style for an older Tanahashi. The reason I think that wrestlers like MJF or even Moxley last year work a bit better is that they can work slower, more methodically, and allow that classic babyface comeback on Tanahashi’s tempo.
The match ends with MJF cheating and using the Dynamite Diamond Ring to take Tanahashi out and I really like this finish. As I said earlier, Tanahashi is a big deal because he feels like one and having MJF cheat to win, because he couldn’t have won otherwise, keeps the vibes of Hiroshi Tanahashi alive. Some alright wrestling and some classic Tanahashi charm nets this match a 7/10.
Owen Hart Cup Men’s Quarterfinals: CM Punk vs. Satoshi Kojima
KOJIMA! LARIAT! LARIAT!
Watching this match was an absolute joy. For some reason, it’s been a while since CM Punk has been on AEW, but I’m not sure why. I love Punk’s wrestling, but in his AEW run, I was not a huge fan of babyface Punk. It worked for feuds like the MJF one, but for other ones CM Punk babyface overwrote whatever other person he was feuding with. Seeing him work heel though? With a crowd that absolutely hated him? Wrestling is so back baby.
This was a hard hitting, meat slapping meat match and I had a big stupid grin on my face the entire time. Between the thick chops, the Kojima vs Punk pec dance, Kojima elbow dropping Punk in the balls, it was a ton of fun. I was afraid of CM Punk coming back to singles matches because of his numerous injuries last year, but this left me giddy and hungry for more.
The wrestling, the nuclear heat on Punk, all of it combined to make an incredible match that I cannot wait to rewatch, 10/10.
AEW International Championship 4-Way: Orange Cassidy vs. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Zack Saber Jr. vs. Daniel Garcia
It’s hard to look at this lineup and expect the match to be bad, and it was not by any stretch of the imagination. ZSJ excels as a brutal technical wrestler, Orange Cassidy is continuing his great International Championship run, Daniel Garcia is equal parts charismatic and talented, and Shibata is, well, Shibata. The match was a great, but felt a bit short with a very abrupt finish.
Four ways are always a bit of an awkward affair. Splitting pairs off to do different areas usually leads to a lot of quick messy camera cuts and missed spots. This match mostly avoided that, thankfully, by keeping the action centered in the ring. It felt a lot like the Double or Nothing casino battle royale, keeping the focal point of the match in the middle of the ring as much as possible. This allows the action to be picked up on a hard camera, but also means that handheld cameras can get more dynamic shots without the director’s brain exploding trying to swap between several cameras, all of which are capturing different actions.
All that aside, the wrestling in the match was phenomenal. Rotating wrestlers in and out for spots, kept the action flowing at an brisk pace. Even for technical wrestling spots, which can slow matches down, having 4 people actively engaging, 3 of which are known for their technical wrestling prowess, means you can do a lot to keep the submission parts from being “rest hold spots.”
There is so much chemistry between these 4 and the way they work together is off the charts. Watching ZSJ and Shibata exchange chops while pushing away Daniel Garcia, who demands to be taken seriously, and Orange Cassidy’s increasingly frantic need to retain at any cost. People have complaints about Forbidden Door and its “lack of story”, but this continues the story that OC and Daniel Garcia have been telling over the past few months. Daniel Garcia’s increasing attempts to be taken seriously as a sports entertainer (NOT a wrestler) and Orange Cassidy’s body paying the price of being a workrate champion are both on full display in this match.
The match felt a bit short, coming in at a brisk 11 minutes 15 seconds, and the ending was very sudden. Shibata hits Daniel Garcia with a PK and Orange Cassidy swoops in to steal the pin and retain. I understand why it was quick, and I’m glad that it didn’t overstay its welcome, but this was one of.my favorites on the card and I would have liked to see a bit more. Nevertheless, a real good outing from all involved, 9/10.
IWGP World Heavyweight Championship: SANADA vs. “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry
Well.
Look, the build to this match was each wrestler in it going “I don’t know who that other guy is” and the general sentiment from everybody was: Why? Why put the IWGP title in the dead middle of the card? Why Jungle Boy? Just why in general? Outside of all that though? It was alright.
Jack Perry gets pretty unfairly maligned a lot of the time, and he’s always a perfectly solid wrestler when he’s in action. I didn’t know who SANADA was before this, and while it didn’t exactly move me to look him up, I wasn’t uninterested. It was just a weird matchup that both of the wrestlers made the best out of the hand they were dealt.
At the end, though, it became obvious what this was in service to: Jack Perry’s heel turn. HOOK, who had accompanied Perry and helped him out of the ring when he was beat by SANADA, is hit with a clothesline and Perry sets his sights on Hook’s FTW title. It’s a turn built on his growing resentment and a nice push from MJF during the lead up to their 4 way at Double or Nothing.
It was an alright match with an interesting post match angle, 6/10.
The Elite (The Young Bucks, Hangman Adam Page), Eddie Kingston, and Tomohiro Ishii vs. Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta), Shota Umino, and Konosuke Takeshita
There was never a chance this match was going to be bad, but it did shock me. Claudio, Mox, Yuta, and Umino have all been in three man tags against Ishii (alongside Tanahashi and Okada) over the past few months, so I had an idea of how the match would play out. But I was shocked when there was a decent amount of Takeshita vs Ishii, and even more shocked that the emotional core of the match was Kingston vs Moxley.
Elite vs BCC has been a good feud thus far and adding Kingston into the fold mixes it up so it doesn’t get old. The chop battle between Ishii and Takeshita was vicious, including him knocking Ishii out with a particularly hard one. This match also used the middle of the ring as the focal point, Kingston and Moxley beating each other senseless while the rest of the wrestlers fought around them. It was a “something for everyone” match, with the Bucks and their quick tandem offense counterbalanced by the classic King’s Road style chop battles with Kingston.
This match is a stopgap, but it’s a good one. A good middle entry introducing Eddie Kingston in order to add a new dramatic angle to the story (and one that I’m personally more interested in) with his fight against good friend Jon Moxley. A great, if a bit chaotic, 10 man match that sees Tomohiro Ishii pin Wheeler Yuta to score the Elite a win in a great 8/10.
AEW Women’s Championship: Toni Storm vs. Willow Nightingale
Don’t have a ton to say about this match honestly. I think Toni Storm is alright and absolutely adore Willow, but I’m not very huge on the Outcasts overall. A perfectly fine match, just not one I was super into. 6/10.
IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship: Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay
This match is incredible. An intense blood feud between two rivals with some brutal action, including an insane Tiger Driver 91. It honestly feels like I would be doing it a disservice to try to describe it. It is something that deserves to be seen. Omega is, as always, incredible and really brings out the best in anyone he wrestles, especially Ospreay. This match is nearly perfect, but I say nearly because there’s a part of it that I did not like at all.
I absolutely hated the ending stretch.
Don Callis is thrown out earlier in the match, forced to go to the back. Later he comes back out and there’s absolutely 0 repercussions, he can just be there again. Fine, maybe he paid off the refs. He hands a screwdriver to Kenny and Ospreay uses it on him, goes for the pin, but Kenny gets his foot on the rope. The match continues on as normal, with Kenny looking poised to win, but in the end Ospreay wins.
Having Omega survive the screwdriver only to still lose serves basically 0 purpose. Any potential 3rd match will likely hinge on Ospreay’s use of the screwdriver to win, so extending the match beyond the point it was used means using extra time that could have been used elsewhere. There was also Don Callis’s “military grade security” which was two guys standing around in airsoft gear and half face masks doing nothing the entire match, which made for a very funny visual.
I want to give this match a 10/10 because I do think it is incredible and I do think, even with my misgivings, it is better than the first outing. It’s impossible to separate how much I loved this from how stupid I found the ending stretch, though, meaning I’m going to have to give it an 9/10.
Jericho Appreciation Society (Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara) and Minoru Suzuki vs. Sting, Darby Allin, and Tetsuya Naito
I was genuinely taken aback that Sting and Chris Jericho had never been in a match together before. That just feels like one of those matches that is laying dusty in the back corner of some episode of WCW from 30 years ago, but no. For the first time ever, Chris Jericho faces off against Sting*
*Sting vs Jericho will face off for a few minutes, tune in a month from now for the real Jericho vs. Sting!
In all seriousness, this match was a bit messy. Darby and Sammy both got to do what they do best in-ring, but not for very long. It all seemed very rushed and wrestlers felt like they were meandering around the ring at times. This was very obviously a match made to set up future matches (which was confirmed later when Jericho demanded a tornado tag at the press conference), but it still felt off. Doesn’t help that it had the dubious honor of having to follow Omega/Ospreay and is standing in the way of Okada/Danielson. Nevertheless, Team Sting picks up a win against Jericho, Guevara, and Suzuki, 5/10.
Kazuchika Okada vs. Bryan Danielson
Who is the greatest wrestler of all time? Is it Okada or Danielson? This match is great, a technical clinic by two of the best wrestlers going right now. A battle between two wrestlers of this caliber had a floor of “good” and it can only go up from there. I just wish that I liked it more than I did.
Do not get me wrong, like the Omega/Ospreay match, this is still very much worth watching and to see these two go at it while they’re still both physically able to is a genuine blessing. There just seemed to be a little something missing that I couldn’t place, that nagged at me the whole time, but not enough to make me not enjoy this.
In a surprise ending, Danielson makes Okada tap, the first time this has happened since Shinsuke Nakamura was still in New Japan. Together Bryan Danielson and Kazuchika Okada bring this train home into the station with a great 9/10.
Closing Thoughts
I do really love AEW PPV time. While I was not really that much of a fan of Double or Nothing, this was an incredible show with a few dips. Some of the matches felt a little short, but overall they kept the PPV moving and, aside from my feelings around the IWGP US Title match, it had a very brisk pace and you could barely feel the 4 hour runtime. It’ll be exciting to see where AEW goes from here with regards to Forbidden Door, and I hope that they continue to make the show better and better every year. Now, if you need me, I will be in my chamber meditating to mentally prepare myself for AEW All In and All Out 1 week apart from each other.
Overall Score: 8/10