Former WWE Star Luke Gallows Questions AEW's Forbidden Door Strategy

Former WWE star Luke Gallows has discussed the AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door pay-per-view, noting that it may be skewed more toward Tony Khan's promotion than the Japanese one.

Gallows, who is now back in NJPW, was asked on "Busted Open" whether the Forbidden Door pay-per-view benefits NJPW as much as AEW. He feels that the spotlight at Forbidden Door is mainly on AEW stars, stating that AEW fans don't really know some of the Japanese stars and may not care about them.

"Man, that's a tough, tough, tough question, because I think on paper, you know — we all read everything, and I'm not involved in any of those companies in any way right now anyway — but I don't know that it always helps whenever for 11 months out of the year, we're geared toward AEW and AEW storylines with some New Japan talent sprinkled in," he began. "And then all of a sudden — and I didn't see the last one — but I know in previous years, sometimes it just felt like these Japanese guys would show up who, like, to me — I consider myself kind of a Japanese wrestler and a Japanese wrestling fan, this is a big deal to me — but it didn't feel like WWF versus WCW, because it would be like if no one knew the WCW players, and a lot of times I felt like some of these AEW fans are kind of just like, well, who are these Japanese guys on my TV? And it was underplayed a little bit, and I don't know if there's any way that you really fix that other than this is just this one-off cool event we do once a year."

Gallows, however, conceded that some fans love the collaboration, while others much prefer watching just the AEW stars each week. This year's Forbidden Door, held in London, England, was the fourth iteration of the event and featured just one NJPW title defense.