AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door 2026: Draws & Duds

It's very nearly time for AEW's yearly crossover event to once again take center stage, as the promotion teams with NJPW, CMLL, and STARDOM to present Forbidden Door! As of this writing there are nine matches on the main card and one on the pre-show, with five total championships on the line. The winners of both the men's and women's Owen Hart Cup tournaments will also be decided, while Mark Briscoe's pursuit of MJF's AEW World Championship is at stake in a 12-man steel cage match.

But which Forbidden Door matches have the Wrestling Inc. staff hyped up to purchase the show, and which make us feel sort of the opposite of that? That's the question this column aims to find out. Here are WINC's biggest draws and biggest duds for AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026!

Kenny Omega and Zack Sabre Jr. will lock horns for the first time in eight years at Forbidden Door.  Just once in their shared time in NJPW did they share the ring, with Omega picking up the win after 15 minutes during a 2018 G1 Climax block bout. And this is about as close to a traditional Forbidden Door style match that can be staged in this period of time.

It's year five of the Forbidden Door event, and in those five years, outside talent have been appearing as and when they are available. So there's not much more runway to the concept even as it continues to live on.

Omega and ZSJ feels like a requiem to the Forbidden Door idea of old, the last true NJPW vs. AEW match that carries any form of what could be considered as nostalgia for that time. Both wrestlers are the best at the particular style they adopted and accentuated. Both are top names for their respective companies. 

Never mind the fact that whenever Kenny Omega is on the card it should be considered a draw. The very fact that this is what Forbidden Door was designed to do, pitting one company's best against the other, just makes this match feel right on an event like this.

Written by Max Everett

Adam Copeland and Christian Cage returned to the land of Tag Team Champions by dethroning FTR in an I Quit match at Double or Nothing, beating their rivals to claim gold and ensure that they will continue to be the tag team throwback they are for a little longer. 

The first step on that road of little longer came with another throwback, Cope going out of his way to buy up a bunch of disposable cameras specifically so they could resurrect the five-second pose. The pose didn't even get that far, however, as the Dogs told the world what they were doin' – and it involved chasing the Tag Team Champions and their shiny belts, no less. 

David Finlay and Clark Connors attacked Cope and Cage, going on to do their own poses in the time between that attack and the eventual return of the champions. The champions returned, attacked the Dogs because that is what wrestling calls for, and then made the challenge. And that's all she wrote. That is the basis for this match. 

Though it's not exactly a world title match with all the assorted bells and whistles, nor is it a Forbidden Door match (anymore), it is a first time match. The Dogs are definitely a team that could realistically hold the titles. And they were a NJPW team once upon a time. But they're not realistically a team that could dethrone Cope and Christian on their first defense, and they've been with AEW for long enough for this to not feel like a bout worthy of the event. 

Overall, this is just an underwhelming inclusion on what is sure to be an indulgent enough wrestling card. Such is the issue when you put titles on legends with limitations on what they can actually do in the ring.

Written by Max Everett

It's important to note that I'm writing this after the June 17 episode of "AEW Dynamite." Not because of the fact that we now have WAY TOO MUCH information about what Will Ospreay and Alex Windsor got up to on their wedding night, but because of the fact that face-to-face segment between Ospreay and Swerve Strickland swung their upcoming match into the draw column for me personally.

Originally, the idea of having Ospreay and Strickland face each other at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 seemed a little uninspired. The two men headlined the Forbidden Door pay-per-view in a very fun match that they then tried to replicate a year later on the 2025 Summer Blockbuster edition of "Dynamite," resulting in a 30-minute draw. So when the brackets for this year's Owen Hart Foundation Tournament came out and both Ospreay and Strickland were not only in the tournament but on opposite sides of the bracket, it's as if AEW screamed "WE ARE DOING OSPREAY/STRICKLAND PART THREE GUYS!!" in our faces, taking some of the unpredictability out of the competition.

However, the tournament has now happened and the two men have had their face-to-face to get people excited, and the idea of Ospreay vs. Strickland for a third summer running has turned from a formality to something I'm genuinely excited about. The winner of the match gets the AEW World Championship match at AEW All In London on August 30, which means that this bout will be the official start of the road to Wembley Stadium.

Everyone is obviously expecting Ospreay to win because he hasn't headlined AEW's biggest show of the year in his home country yet. With that said, Strickland's new heel persona has worked wonders for him in recent months — a much more dangerous, calculating version of himself that gives this match something it didn't have in 2024 or 2025: a face/heel dynamic. The previous two matches were babyface exhibitions to sit back and enjoy, but now we have a situation where AEW is actively urging you to cheer for Ospreay, which will make his victory (if he gets it that is) all the more rewarding.

There is the added layer of intrigue with the Death Riders, but to be honest, I hope they don't get involved because that will aid the story they've been telling. Bringing Ospreay up to a standard where no one in AEW can beat him, they don't need to show their faces in this one. The long road to Wembley begins in San Jose; the question is will it be Ospreay bringing it home, or will Wembley once again be Swerve's House?

Written by Sam Palmer

The teams have been selected. Mark Briscoe has his guys. MJF has his guys. The main event of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 is set in stone...and it's fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Just fine. I'm not sure if I'm in the minority when it comes to Team Briscoe vs. Team MJF inside a steel cage, but for as good as this match will likely be given AEW's track record with violence, chaos, and "plunderfests," I just can't get behind this match at all. 

The main reason is simple. Forbidden Door is an interpromotional pay-per-view featuring AEW, New Japan Pro Wrestling, CMLL, and STARDOM. Of the 12 men involved in the main event, all 12 of them are AEW contracted wrestlers. To all of the people who will answer back saying "Konosuke Takeshita is technically an AEW and NJPW guy because he's under a dual contract," or "Andrade El Idolo has been at a number of NJPW's main shows this year," please just stop. Andrade is an AEW guy and so is Takeshita, and besides, Takeshita has a third contract with DDT and you don't see that company's logo on the poster do you?

This is a match that embodies the state of the Forbidden Door concept. It's an AEW show with a smattering of international talent sprinkled throughout to appease the fans of those promotions, which in reality is basically every AEW show when you think about it long enough. I do respect the fact that Tony Khan isn't shoehorning NJPW or CMLL guys into a match they have no business being a part of for the sake of a concept, but when your show is built around a concept of seeing wrestlers from four different companies going at it, you end up pleasing almost nobody.

On the main crux of the story itself, as much as I love seeing Mark Briscoe getting this kind of shine, it's almost pointless considering you aren't going to have him win the AEW World Championship from MJF anyway. If anything, there's more intrigue in what might happen at AEW Redemption 2026 because at least there you have a chance of Kenny Omega getting himself back in the title picture one month out from AEW All In London 2026. Briscoe is great, and his team will likely win, but unlike the Darby Allin title reign that was designed around a specific story, slotting Briscoe in this spot just kind of feels like AEW is killing time before Wembley Stadium. It will be fun, but it's all just a bit unnecessary.

Written by Sam Palmer