AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door 2025: Biggest Winners And Losers

The portal between New Japan Pro Wrestling and AEW has been closed, at least until the next time Tomohiro Ishii decides to show up on a random "Dynamite," and another Forbidden Door event is in the books.

The show was full of highs and lows, comings and goings, and various other happenings. We've compiled the "what happened" of the evening on the results page, and we've already broken down what we loved and what we hated, so now it's my turn to take a look at the Winners and the Losers from Forbidden Door 2025. Some of the winners were just that, winners, like Hiroshi Tanahashi, who closed out his final Forbidden Door with a win, and some of the losers are winners, like Toni Storm. Some losers won, like Nigel McGuinness. It's hard to explain; it'd probably be better to jump right in.

So without further ado, here are the Winners and Losers from Forbidden Door 2025.

Nigel McGuinness's run in AEW has been nothing short of a miracle. If your heart isn't warmed by the former ROH World Champion's reclamation of his legacy, following his initial retirement in the early 2010s, then there might be something a little wrong with you.

A run that started in Wembley Stadium, where McGuinness made a surprise appearance in the 2024 Casino Gauntlet, has now brought McGuinness to The O2 Arena, where he competed in front of a record-setting crowd for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship. Every match McGuinness wrestles in AEW is an emotional victory, but getting a moment like he did on Sunday to share the ring with his fellow countryman in front of a packed crowd in London was special even by the lofty standards of McGuinness's current run.

McGuinness's tenure in AEW is a great example of what the company does really well: Letting wrestlers go out on their own terms. McGuinness's stretch since his return in the Casino Gauntlet has been a slightly-muted version of what AEW did with WWE Hall of Famer Sting. Someone who fans assumed had been forced into an early retirement, getting one last chance at glory. Many expected Daniel Garcia to betray McGuinness in some way, and while that could still be on the horizon, as it stands Garcia has become the Darby Allin to McGunness's Sting. McGuinness doesn't need to win another match ever again, and he'll still probably find room in my Winners' section through the sheer emotional weight that each of his appearance carries. I'm not made of stone afterall.

The problem with being "Timeless," is that it can also be swapped out with "endless." I think Toni Storm is a great wrestler, with an even better character, and for the most part AEW has been correct in keeping her at the top of the division, but she is starting to hit a ceiling. There is only so much success one can have before it starts to get a bit old.

AEW is clearly trying to find someone who is as good a foil to Storm as Mariah May was, and while Mercedes Mone feels like a natural rival for the Women's World Champion, Mone is busy defending the TBS Championship and 8 other titles. This means that Storm is stuck in a vicious cycle of success. Her win over Athena makes sense, but it does feel like AEW has burned through the ROH Women's World Champion's big matches between Sunday's match with Storm and her recent match against Mercedes Mone. Athena has essentially been sacrificed on the altar of Toni and Mercedes's success. Mone will have her own struggles eventually, but as it stands, being unable to beat Storm at least makes Mone's journey interesting, whereas I am now sitting around and waiting for AEW to pull the trigger on "Mercedes 10-Belts," which means all that's left for Toni is the ending, whenever that may be. She might be a winner on paper for the forseeable future, but she is just kicking that inevitable loss down the road.

In the early days of AEW, Hiroshi Tanahashi referred to Chris Jericho's passing through "the forbidden door" between AEW and NJPW, and thus, a wrestling trademark was born. Therefore, Hiroshi Tanahashi taking part in the main event of his last Forbidden Door before he retires in January, as well as getting the show-closing victory for what was essentially "Team AEW," was the kind of emotional climax that only wrestling, and other forms of serialized entertainment, can create.

The match may have been centered on people bidding farewell to Will Ospreay before he undergoes neck surgery. Tanahashi was an emotional focal point of the match, with his struggle to deal with his injured knees being central to the story, making his ability to climb the top rope and deliver a High Fly Flow for the pinfall all the more impressive. While the aftermath of the match was a total bummer, with The Death Riders trapping and seemingly crippling Will Ospreay, the match that preceded it was the kind of feel-good main event that wrestling fans love. Between Tanahashi's knees, Ospreay's neck, Omega's guts, Allin's altitude sickness, and Ibushi's...well...Ibushi-ness, many expected the babyface team to suffer one tragedy, if not more, and the fact that the match went as well as it did probably added to the emotional high of Tanahashi's victory.

If you're a big fan of ear mutilation, then you might read this and say I'm crazy, but the Lights Out Steel Cage Match that closed Forbidden Door simply did not deliver on the level of violence and horror that many expected.

As mentioned, the babyface team was a motley crew of injured or ring-rusted stars. It was not out of line for someone to say, "I absolutely expect someone to die in that match," and a majority of the people making that prediction expected it to be Will Ospreay, who outright claimed to not be medically cleared for the match and in need of neck surgery. Even the participants seemed to think Ospreay was not long for this world, as many of the entrances seemed to involve them shaking Ospreay's hand and thanking him, lest they not get a chance after the match. So forgive me, but after all of this morbid build, the sickos of the world expected something much more horrifying and tragic than what we got. 

Want broken glass? Here are some gummy bears. Want Hiroshi Tanahashi to jump off the cage? He will do a very safe High Fly Flow from the top rope, thank you very much. Want Will Ospreay to die? We're going to end the show with the gentlest beatdown you've ever seen.

Much like when Chris Jericho was thrown off the top of the Blood & Guts cage onto a crashpad, or when the Explosion Death Match between Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston delivered very little by way of explosions or death, sickos are once again in a position of saying, "If you didn't want us to expect horrifying violence, don't promise us horrifying violence." The company can hang its hat on things like Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland's bloodbath, or putting Nick Gage on free TV, but there's still an issue of courting the sickos and then booking for the more emotionally balanced fan. It's admittedly safer for everyone involved, but when you build a whole match around "Will Ospreay is probably gonna die," it does leave us sickos saying, "I don't know, it's pretty violent, I guess," like Homer Simpson looking at a massive can of Foster's.