AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door 2023: 5 Things We Hated And 5 Things We Loved
Sunday night, for the second consecutive year, All Elite Wrestling and New Japan Pro-Wrestling came together to open the Forbidden Door. It was night of dream matches, bloody rivalries, and fantastic wrestling, kicking off with an AEW World Championship match between MJF and Hiroshi Tanahashi and closing with a contest between two of the greatest performers in history, Bryan Danielson and Kazuchika Okada.
Of course, for all the astounding moments fans got to witness during Forbidden Door, it wasn't a perfect show, and there were some things we could have done without. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check out Wrestling Inc.'s live coverage of the event, but if you want to know what we thought of the evening's festivities, this column is the place to be! Here are five things we hated and five things we loved about AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2023.
Hated: Not the champ's strongest win
On Saturday's episode of "AEW Collision," legendary Japanese wrestler Hiroshi Tanahashi battled Swerve Strickland in a match that was...not great, with Strickland having to resort to some quick and innovative thinking to salvage a Tanahashi botch. It was a poor omen going into Forbidden Door, where Tanahashi was set to face MJF in a show-opening AEW World Championship match.
And yet, despite Tana's clear limitations, the match was actually going pretty well at first! In our "Collision" review, we said that Strickland wasn't the ideal opponent for the Ace, since his style relied on the exact sort of quick, precise movement that Tanahashi can no longer rely on. MJF, on the other hand, is the perfect opponent for an aging star like Tanahashi, as the match could be built more around character work and less around ring work. As a result, the majority of the match went well, as MJF worked his absolute ass off while expertly telling the story of someone who doesn't want to be here and doesn't understand why he hasn't won by now.
Unfortunately, it all fell apart at the finish, which involved (a) a comically lengthy roll-up by Tanahashi while the referee was distracted, followed by (b) MJF needing the Dynamite Diamond Ring to defeat a man who was clearly past his prime. The larger story of MJF understandably remains one about his own insecurity, but this is the exact kind of match he should be winning clean, and the finish was somehow overcomplicated and abrupt at the same time.
Loved: Orange Cassidy continues to outrun entropy (for now)
We still would have liked to see a singles match between Orange Cassidy and Zack Sabre Jr., but maybe that can still happen down the road — their post-match face-off certainly suggested it was at least possible. For now, the four-way match for the AEW International Championship was a ton of fun, and did an admirable job of continuing the story that the stresses of Cassidy's lengthy title reign are probably going to catch up with him sooner rather than later.
Cassidy began the match covered in kinesio tape and ended it having spent the majority of the contest selling an injured hand; in the end, he was only able to retain his title by capitalizing on a Penalty Kick delivered to Daniel Garcia by Katsuyori Shibata. The victory was Cassidy's 25th successful title defense, which ties him with Jade Cargill for most consecutive title defenses in AEW history. Will he earn a 26th win and break Cargill's record? It's starting to seem unlikely. The tale of Cassidy's reign of late has been one of increasing attrition, and we'd be surprised if he kept the belt much longer. Still, if this was the last match to end with Cassidy holding the International title, it was a damn good one to go out on.
Hated: CM Punk was also here
If there was one thing we weren't expecting from Forbidden Door, it's that the most boring and uneventful match of the evening (not the worst match, but the blandest) would belong to CM Punk. He came out for the second match of the night and received essentially the same reaction he received on Saturday's "Collision" show — a mix of cheers and boos, with the boos tending to come through stronger from the Canadian crowd. It was an odd placement for a man who has essentially taken credit for being AEW's biggest draw, particularly on a night when the company broke its own live gate record.
The match with Satoshi Kojima was fine for a contest that Punk was obviously going to win, but it definitely didn't need as much time as it got, and it never really got out of second gear. Maybe it was as good as we could have expected, considering the match was tacked onto the card and may have been a last-minute replacement for CM Punk vs. KENTA, but compared to everything else on the Forbidden Door card, it wasn't in any way memorable, and it's strange to say that about someone who's been the talk of the wrestling world for the past calendar year.
Loved: The depths of the jungle
SANADA vs. "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry was what it was: a perfectly cromulent but mostly unremarkable match that came about because somebody suddenly remembered the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship exists. But as it turned out, what was seemingly the most narratively aimless match on the card existed largely to facilitate a major character development, as we discovered when Perry, who was being comforted by HOOK after his loss, shockingly turned on his tag team partner, to the derision of the Toronto crowd.
Perry's turn doesn't come completely as a surprise; it had been reported to be in the works for the near future, and it's a welcome change for a competitor who can only benefit from a fresh coat of paint. But more than that, it also makes perfect sense for the Jungle Boy character. He had previously promised to win championship gold before the end of 2022, after all, and the year is more than halfway expired at this point. After coming up short in the four-way AEW title match at Double or Nothing last month, and then again tonight against SANADA, it only makes sense for the young up-and-comer to begin to crack under the pressure ... and there's his good buddy HOOK and his FTW Championship, which he's only defended seven times in nearly a year. Maybe Perry ends up the new FTW Champion, maybe he doesn't — the crowd chanting "You f***ed up" doesn't exactly bode well for him — but regardless, his heel turn was a welcome piece of story progression on a show that was far more interested in the in-ring product.
Hated: These AEW PPVs are still too long
We know this complaint is like beating a dead horse at this point, but it has to be said again: Wrestling shows in 2023 simply do not need to be this long. One of the planned matches on Forbidden Door, Adam Cole vs. Tom Lawlor, even had to be cut from the card at the last minute, and the show still ran a full four hours, with an hour-long pre-show that contained four matches on its own. That meant we had a total of 13 matches, and the number was only that low due to unfortunate circumstance that drove Lawlor to tweet out all-caps profanity.
It's not as though the show couldn't have been streamlined. Several of Forbidden Door's matches didn't need to go nearly as long as they did, and there were also several matches on the show that seemed to exist exclusively to get the highest number of AEW and NJPW wrestlers on the card, a frequent tendency of AEW PPVs born of their strange adherence to running five extremely long PPVs per year. The model seems to work fine for them financially — Tony Khan got defensive on the subject when asked about it at the post-show media scrum — but personally, we vastly prefer the WWE strategy of shorter shows, more frequently. Maybe we're just getting old.
Loved: The ballad of Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston
We were admittedly a little puzzled by the presence of an Elite vs. Blackpool Combat Club 10-man tag match on this card, if for no other reason than we're expecting the two factions to meet in another 10-man tag match when Blood & Guts comes to Boston. But after seeing the match, we're certainly not complaining. Not only was it a phenomenal contest it is own right, but it was anchored by some of the most emotional, character-driven storytelling we've seen in AEW since ... well, since the last time Eddie Kingston was involved in an AEW storyline, probably.
The relationship between Kingston and his longtime friend, Jon Moxley, was the straw that stirred the drink at Forbidden Door. Moxley is aligned with fellow BCC member Claudio Castagnoli, and while Kingston was able to overcome his well-documented hatred of Castagnoli for Moxley's sake during 2022's Blood & Guts match, that was one year and a deeply personal Ring of Honor world title feud ago. This time, when the opportunity to fight Castagnoli appeared, Kingston didn't hesitate, siding with The Elite — and against Moxley — in an effort to once again get his hands on his nemesis.
The resulting encounter was full-on Shakespearean tragedy. Kingston didn't want to fight Moxley. He still doesn't. When they came face-to-face in the match, Kingston was able to get fired up enough to engage in a ferocious duel of chops with his old comrade (one that, wonderfully, continued throughout an entire massive brawl involving the eight other competitors) but it's one thing to fight your friend yourself; it's another to watch someone else hurt them. When the Young Bucks prepared for a double superkick on Moxley, Kingston shoved him out of the way and took the move himself, a sacrifice the savage Moxley utterly failed to reward later in the contest. Kingston's team ultimately won, but he left the arena in anger, shoving the Bucks aside as they questioned his actions. He didn't even really get to fight Claudio.
This right here? This is the good stuff. This is the kind of storytelling that makes wrestling great. If it's getting folded into a narrative that has already seen an emotional reunion between The Elite and Adam Page, the Bloodline might finally have a legitimate challenger.
Hated: Still no movement in Outcasts vs. Originals
We touched on this subject in our "Collision" review, but Toni Storm's successful title defense against Willow Nightingale at Forbidden Door also did not deign to advance the "Outcasts vs. Originals" story in any meaningful way. The match? That was excellent. Storm and Nightingale have wonderful chemistry as two of the women's division's stronger and tougher competitors, and Saraya and Ruby Soho were delightfully evil at ringside before being tossed by the referee. But that moment, it itself, raised the fundamental question that this story should have already answered: Why was Storm the only participant in the contest with friends at ringside? Shouldn't Willow at the very least have had Skye Blue around? Blue backed up Nightingale on "Collision" the night before, so we know she was present in Toronto. Where was she? Is Hikaru Shida back in Japan? For that matter, the very fact that Britt Baker didn't appear at all on an AEW PPV was bizarre, and particularly strange in this context, seeing as she has an Owen Hart Foundation Tournament match with Soho this Wednesday on "Dynamite." We couldn't have done something to build to that?
You can't tell a story about two factions fighting a war if you only ever give us one faction. We understand that Jamie Hayter is injured and that the original Forbidden Door plans might have involved NJPW's Mercedes Mone before her own injury, but injured wrestlers can still participate in angles, and there are several other women on the roster would benefit from getting the call to step up and become part of a major storyline. Instead, there is no storyline. There's just a match. And one match, even when it's good, simply isn't enough in AEW's least-prioritized division.
Loved: Omega/Ospreay II, or, pro wrestling is fake and dumb and wonderful
At the post-show media scrum, Bryan Danielson admitted he didn't want to have to follow Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay, and we can see why. The undisputed match of the night, the second singles contest in Omega and Ospreay's cross-promotional feud — which began at the Tokyo Dome in January and which now has a third chapter that needs to be written, possibly at Wembley Stadium — was one of the greatest wrestling matches of 2023 so far, a brutal, beautiful, perfectly-paced love letter to pro graps. Those who had watched the Wrestle Kingdom match were certainly rewarded, and there were other callbacks to matches from Omega's past, in particular, for those in the know, but you didn't need that history to get swept up in the bloodstained glory of this match. It was the longest match of the night, and it used that time to great effectiveness, every big moment getting time to breathe as the contest unfolded, going from an athletic competition between arrogant equals to a vicious street fight between hated rivals, and finally to Ospreay's unparalleled natural abilities finally overcoming the superhuman will of Omega (with a little help from Don Callis along the way, of course).
Negatives? Sure, one or two. With Omega as the hometown Canadian hero, Ospreay went full Shawn Michaels, rubbing the Canadian flag on his crotch, jawing with children at ringside, and of course, applying Bret Hart's Sharpshooter submission hold. It was possibly the worst Sharpshooter ever attempted, but far more egregious was the transition into Chris Benoit's Crippler Crossface — on the anniversary of the touching tribute episode WWE aired about Benoit the day after his death, before anyone knew he had murdered his family before committing suicide. That was a little much.
Also Ospreay tried to snap Omega's neck like a popsicle stick with a Tiger Driver. That is also a thing that happened. DON'T DO THAT.
There will be some noise, doubtless, about Ospreay delivering Omega's own finisher, the One-Winged Angel — a move nobody ever kicks out of — and Omega kicking out at one. To that we say, go be skeptical of the CGI feats performed in a Marvel movie and see where that gets you. Wrestling at its best does not have to be realistic, it merely has to be visceral. It has to make you feel the way that crowd in Toronto felt when that kick-out happened. If that breaks the illusion of wrestling for you, it's possible you're taking wrestling too seriously.
Hated: At least that one pose was cute
We really don't want to spend too much time on the sloppy botch-fest that was the six-man tag that pit Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, and Minoru Suzuki against Darby Allin, Sting, and Tetsuya Naito. Suffice it to say, it was in the right spot on the card, wedged between the two matches we were all mainly here to see.
This one was either poorly-planned, poorly-executed, or both, and Guevara nearly killed Sting (who spent way too much time in the ring) on at least two occasions. Suzuki was his usual delightful Murder Grandpa self, but neither Naito nor Jericho are the performers they used to be, or even the ones they were during their much-invoked IWGP Intercontinental title match four years ago. The bulk of the performance that wasn't soaked in nostalgia fell to Allin and Guevara, neither of whom are ready to anchor this kind of thing, especially when spots start going wrong. Just a mess all around, and not one that makes us excited for Wednesday's tornado tag match.
All that having been said, it was almost worth it anyway for that Le Suzuki Gods pose performed by all three members of the heel team. That was pretty great.
Loved: The final countdown
What is there to even say about Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada? Match of the night? No; it had a very tough act to follow in that regard, and Danielson fracturing his forearm with ten minutes left didn't help. In a way, the match itself couldn't help but be a disappointment in relation to the hype that surrounded it, a miracle of a match between two men with legitimate claims to the title of best wrestler in the world. It was a technical wrestling spectacle that wasn't as exciting as some may have wanted it to be and never really got into the gear that fans might have expected it to reach, though there were still a million tiny moments to appreciate (and also Danielson playing up his history of concussions for a heel spot, which was perhaps less appreciated). It was a great match, but almost certainly not the best match the two could have performed together.
But who cares? Danielson vs. Okada was awesome. The fact that it was happening at all was awesome. The fact that it main-evented the show was awesome. Danielson coming out to Europe's "The Final Countdown" for the first time since 2009 was one of the great moments in wrestling history just on its own. And Bryan cleanly tapping out Okada (with, as Kurt Angle might say, a fractured freaking forearm) was both shocking in its abruptness — we were certainly expecting the match to go longer — and staggering in its consequence. The American Dragon just tapped out the Rainmaker. Where were you when it happened?
There's a lot to criticize about Tony Khan and his approach to booking weekly wrestling television. There are numerous things he could, and should, do better. But sometimes you just want somebody to buy all the action figures and play with them, and that's what we got at Forbidden Door. The term "dream match" gets thrown around way too often, especially in AEW and especially by Khan himself, but this one was worthy of the name. If we lose sight of that by nitpicking the details, why are we even wrestling fans?