Forbidden Door is the fourth AEW PPV this year, and the third one of theirs that I’ve ordered and watched. For all of the decisions that I have roasted him over, I will again give Tony Khan props for finally putting his PPVs in a place that is easy for me to buy them and watch.
This has been a tough year for AEW, with all it’s business numbers down while every other company at least appears to be doing better than last year. There are a million different opinions being offered as to why AEW is in the mud in 2024, and what can be done, but I’m not going to dig into them here. For me the only questions are whether this show will entertain me, and will they give me something to make me want to buy the next one.
Pre show
They had five matches here, three of which were worthy of your time. Mariah May and Saraya had a pretty good, entertaining match that led into the Women’s World Title Match on the main show. Willow Nightengale and Tam Nakano took on Krisn Statlander and Momo Watanabe in a cross company tag team that was good and the six man Lucha Bros/Mistico team up made for a good time against Los Ingnorables de Japon. They could have swapped those with some matches on the main show as far as I’m concerned.
MJF vs Hechicero
It was fine, but this could have been booked for Dynamite instead. Like it really wasn’t necessary at all other than to get MJF on the show, and the only intrigue was that he was facing a guy most of have never seen much if at all. But even then we knew how this was going so that didn’t help much. It was kinda just there. Speaking of which….
The Elite vs Hiroshi Tanahashi and The Acclaimed
The only thing PPV worthy about this match was getting Tanahashi on an American PPV show, but even that is something that should have happened in 2014 as opposed to now. Thankfully they kept it under 15 minutes. The Elite ‘we’re EVPs!’ act is one of the worst things going on in the company; their entire schtick is reliant on the audience knowing years of lore and inside baseball and anyone who’s not already invested in them is likely to find them to be corny and bad actors. From a work standpoint it was fine.
Bryan Danielson vs Shingo Takagi
And now we get a match worthy of the show title and my $50. These two have only faced off once, back in 2010, and both have since reached the highest heights in their corners of the world. From where I sat this is where it started to get good. Bryan as always took some bumps that he shouldn’t, but there were a lot of good submissions and striking throughout. A great way to wake up the crowd.
AEW Women’s Title Match: Toni Storm (c) vs Mina Shirakawa
This match had the most entertaining story going into the show, with Storm’s protege Mariah May torn between her mentor and her old tag team partner (May and Mina were partners in Stardom before May came to AEW). Enough can’t be said about how they managed to fit this story into the theme of the PPV in a way that was not forced at all. The match was great, both ladies hit a lot of big, well executed moves and it looked and felt like a big fight for all the marbles. Easily a top 5 women’s match of the year so far for me.
Orange Cassidy vs Zack Sabre, Jr
I’ve said in a few conversations that Zack Sabre Jr has never been my cup of tea – he’s a great technical wrestler but I find him utterly boring to watch. I gave this one a chance and it was an excellent wrestling match. Orange Cassidy showed he can exchange holds with the best of them, and the final sequence of reversals that led to the finish was very well done. I still feel the way I do about ZSJ but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a very good match, because it was.
Chris Jericho, Big Bill, and Jeff Cobb vs Samoa Joe, Hook, and Katsuyori Shibata
Another match that could have been on Dynamite or Collision. I will say that being paired up with Samoa Joe has done wonders for both Hook and Shibata in a very short time so this program has been good for something at least. This match was fine but they could have gone 10 instead of 13 and gotten the same result.
6 man ladder match for the TNT Title – Jack Perry, Lio Rush, Mark Briscoe, Konosuke Takeshita, Dante Martin, and El Phantasmo
This one was crazy, as one would expect. These matches always have a ton of crazy stunts, while the questions always are: will there be anything new and will things make any kind of sense or will it be stunts for the sake of doing stunts? They gave the right answers in both cases. There were a few times where I was like ‘oh, that’s different’ and I was never asking ‘why’d you do that? about anything. Takeshita is a star of the near future; the guy has everything physically that you would want in a wrestler and can already work really well. Mark Briscoe remains a crowd favorite and had the crowd behind him. Lio is still maybe the fastest man in wrestling and moved around in ways that are impossible to explain. Marting and Phantasmo did their parts as well. Which leaves us to the problem, one Jungle Jack Perry.
We all knew he was winning, because it’s part of the EVP Takeover angle, but instead of getting him more heat I’m just like…….ok, sure. I can’t speak for the fanbase as a whole but to me Perry has zero juice as a performer and is doing absolutely nothing with this. I don’t think the crowd was feeling him much either. And now that Perry has the belt I don’t see anything particularly compelling about him as champion going forward. This title was vacated because of Edge’s injury so this wasn’t in the original plans, but I don’t see what you get out this that would be any better than giving Takeshita a run with a belt to see how he handles it.
TBS vs New Japan Strong Title: Mercedes Mone vs Stephanie Vaquer
The NJ Strong Title is the one Mercedes was supposed to win last year when she got injured during the match, so this is a reclamation of sorts. Vaquer got in most of the offense and did a great job, to such a degree that the crowd was cheering for her down the stretch. I liked Mercedes match vs Willow Nightengale from Double or Nothing better, but this was very good too.
Mone always delivers in these spots, and this was no different than we’ve come to expect. It was my first time seeing Vaquer and I was impressed. But while this was one of the better matches of the night the real story came afterwards, with the return of one Britt Baker.
The place erupted when her music hit and she came out from behind the curtain. No doubt we’re going to get the CEO vs DMD at All In.
IWGP World Title: Jon Moxley (c) vs Tetsuya Naito
The worst match on the main show. As meh as a few of the earlier ones were this was just low energy and sloppy. It really looks like Moxley won the title so they could do this match where Naito wins it back so New Japan could get a big W on this show. This match could have been sponsored by the US Postal Service, IYKYK.
AEW World Title Match: Swerve Strickland (c) vs Will Ospreay
Now I’ll confess that I questioned very loudly why Tony would even book this match so soon. Swerve just recently won the world title and is supposed to be one of the people AEW is building around for the near future, while Ospreay just joined the company full time and has quickly become one of their biggest stars in just a few months. I thought it was too early for either guy to lose, especially if it was going to be clean since both guys were babyfaces, and that they should save this for All In. I was wrong. The finish was done the right way – Swerve got his win over a big opponent but not in such a way that made Ospreay look like a sucker. It was the best match of the night and as much as I usually frown on a lot of what they did here, namely kicking out of a lot of moves that should have ended the match, this was a big match that was the main event on a big show for the world title so powering up beyond the usual level is fine here. I have it a hair below Ospreay vs Bryan Danielson from AEW Dynasty, because that one was closer to what I prefer as far as the kickouts and all, but it’s easily one of the best matches of the year in any company. And it was worth the price of the show all by itself.
Matches: B, Finishes: A, Swerves/Surprises: A, Storylines: B, Pacing: B
Final Verdict: B
There was some great stuff on this show. The Storm/Mina match was a perfect blend of a great match and a highly entertaining story, with a fitting payoff. Mercedes once again did what she does best, the main event was a match of the year candidate and made both guys look great. The ladder match was a great spectacle, and we got two great technical matches with Shingo/Danielson and Sabre Jr/Cassidy. The preshow also had three very entertaining matches. Anytime you put on a PPV with nine matches ranging from good to match of the year level that’s a win. And unlike some previous PPVs the pacing was good here. 10 matches on the main show and they managed to get all of them finished in four hours. I know that sounds crazy but there are quite a few PPVs from both AEW and WWE that failed to do that.
And now for the negatives. The first two matches from the main show, along the with the Jericho Crew/Samoa Joe crew six man tag, could have been dropped from this show and done on TV. They weren’t good enough to warrant spending more of time on to watch on a separate show, and there wasn’t anything special about them to make them fit the theme of this show. Thankfully they placed in spots that make them easy to skip over on a rewatch, but they do drag down the show here. The Moxley/Naito match, while fitting the theme of the show perfectly, was just bad. There were also two matches on the preshow, a 4 way tag team match and a Kyle Fletcher squash match, that were unnecessary. If you have 15 total matches on a show and five of them could have been done on TV or not at all, then you should have just booked a shorter card.
All that being said, AEW is batting 3 for 3 in my house this year with the PPVs. Most importantly, watching this show makes me want to see what’s going to happen at All In, so kudos.
Stroke of Genius 