AEW Forbidden Door 2026 Discussion

[The King of Old School]

6 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Am I missing something because I'm seeing a LOT of praise for the Maya v Mone match like it's a MOTY candidate, it was fine I guess but not even as good as the other women's match on the card? Is this a mix of Mone's weird fans being weird and people caught up in the emotion over Maya World?

What is the emotion over Maya World out of interest?

I know she's still very young but feel like she's been around a bit in AEW/ROH?

[Merzbow]

1 minute ago, The King of Old School said:

What is the emotion over Maya World out of interest?

I'm just seeing a lot of people really invested in her as a breakout star, along with her brother passing and the sudden push due to injuries. I know gauging things by online chatter isn't the best but it's there.

[Supremo]

54 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I've watched a few more matches but I really just couldn't be bothered with this show.

Glad it’s not just me. I had a similar feeling with Dynasty this year. If I don’t watch AEW pay per views live or on the following day, those ridiculous show lengths make it feel more and more insurmountable. I only realised this morning that I’ve still not caught up and it’s now Wednesday (and you know what that means!).

I saw Tony Khan announce that starting with Redemption he’s going to be moving AEW pay per view forward, so they start an hour earlier. You’d hope this means he’s acknowledging what a slog his shows are, but if I’m being honest, I think this likely means they’ll become six hour shows rather than five.

Tony Khan’s favourite pay per view is Wrestlemania 35. Pass it on.

Edited July 1 by Supremo

[Statto]

It's a tough spot for them, really.

As they creep ever closer to a PPV a month it'd be beneficial in terms of show length, quality of build etc to not have basically everyone of any note on every PPV.

But... they've still got to sell the tickets, they've still got to sell the PPV. I don't think they're yet at the point where "AEW PPV" alone instantly sells out arenas, so they can't take too much of a risk of people not bothering to buy cos 4 of their 5 favourite wrestlers aren't booked. 

[westlondonmist]

11 minutes ago, Statto said:

It's a tough spot for them, really.

As they creep ever closer to a PPV a month it'd be beneficial in terms of show length, quality of build etc to not have basically everyone of any note on every PPV.

But... they've still got to sell the tickets, they've still got to sell the PPV. I don't think they're yet at the point where "AEW PPV" alone instantly sells out arenas, so they can't take too much of a risk of people not bothering to buy cos 4 of their 5 favourite wrestlers aren't booked. 

They showed with Forbidden Door you can get your big names into 1 match, or many of them anyway. Also match length comes into it, did Maya vs Money need to be 25 minutes? Maya is still farely green and maybe it woudl have been better 14-16? I think you could easily of knocked an average of 5 minutes per match and it probably still would have been a really good show. Not every match has to be an epic and nor should they need to be. 

Edited July 1 by westlondonmist

[LaGoosh]

I did watch a few other matches though so will give my thoughts:

- Cage match was silly and fun but perhaps a bit too silly. The stipulation was ridiculous which hurt the match - all these guys getting fucked up just so Mark Briscoe can win a title shot was absurd. Nice to see Takeshita getting a monster pop. All the bits with him, Okada and Fletcher were easily the best parts of the match. I hope they do a 3 way at All In. Kevin Knight is also really good generally - doing these big elaborate spots but making them feel natural rather than overly choreographed spots. His body control is absolutely incredible. Andrade sweating through three tops just to fuck off MJF and Don Callis at the end was hilariously dumb.

- Bandido/Mox was a good match that had no weight to it. Of course Bandido is a beautiful boy under that mask. Bandido is a difficult guy to push because he feels almost like a special attraction and you don't want to risk overexposing him and he can't really cut promos so it's difficult to tell any stories with him. On the other hand though he just has something intangible about him - everyone can't help but love him, he's an amazing wrestler and he can't just lose every big match he has forever.  Tricky one to book.

- I love Thekla but Starlight Kid did not live up the level of hype I had heard about her and the match bored me.

I might watch Ospreay/Swerve at some point.

[BomberPat]

This show felt like a lot like recent Dynamites to me, in that it was all technically very good, but I didn't find myself caring at all. I watched the pre-show Monday lunchtime, then watched the rest across Tuesday lunchtime and evening. Maybe I'd feel differently if I watched it live or at least "as live", but probably not.

Nothing really worth remarking on from the pre-show, other that than the commentary was really disjointed because the AEW commentators just didn't seem to interact with Walker Stewart at all - he'd say something, there would be a pause, and then Excalibur and Nigel would start chatting without ever responding to Walker. It was an odd vibe, and thankfully not really there so much in the main show.

The opening three-way tag was good fun. There were a few points where people were obviously setting up spots, though that's excusable given the amount of people involved, the style of wrestling, and the language barriers, and generally everything moved fast enough that it didn't matter. Somebody said this show felt like a bottle episode, and in a way maybe that's what Forbidden Door should be in terms of just big showcase matches across the partner companies, then they can do a lot worse than stuff like this. I do wonder why they don't do a lot more with Mistico, though - he's massively over, a genuine star, and absolutely brilliant, yet he never really does much but be an extra body in a multi-man, when he could easily be a title contender against a heel champion for an episode of Dynamite, or even a PPV with the right build and in the right location. I assume it's probably CMLL being precious about not wanting him losing singles matches.

I really liked Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr, it felt like a clash of styles, but at times was too much a Kenny Omega match without much Zack - the story of Zack Sabre Jr being dragged into a brawl and outside of his comfort zone is the opposite to what they should have been telling; Zack's the guest to AEW TV, and the heel, so it should have been Kenny being forced to wrestle Zack's match, which the audience and Kenny (in kayfabe) would be less familiar with, and would give Kenny an obstacle to overcome. This felt more than anything like a dry run for Zack as a full-time member of the roster.

Everything else I thought was at least good, sometimes great; both women's matches overdelivered, and the prospect of Thekla vs. Mercedes is quite exciting. The fact that Mercedes wasn't originally in the field for the Owen made me hold on to a tiny glimmer of hope that she might lose, and that maybe they did have a plan to tell a story about her being humbled by all her losses and having to rebuild as a result, but had to delay it when she filled in for Willow in the tournament, and were going to have a loss in the final be the catalyst for that story. I get why they didn't do that, though.

 

I thought the cage match was fun with moments that got really good and moments I really disliked. I hated the gimmicked exploding bag, and I don't think this Lio Rush gimmick belongs anywhere near a match with World Title implications. I loved the Andrade face turn, and him having to remove multiple layers of clothing to reveal that it was planned all along was hilarious. The low blow he gave to Jake Doyle might be one of the nastiest I've ever seen. I feel bad for Speedball Mike Bailey in that his tag partner turned heel, and Speedball became the third most important rival to him immediately, to the point that he didn't even get into a big multi-man schmozz like this, and just isn't part of Kevin Knight's story at all - given they started a story about the Don Callis Family taking out members of The Conglomeration just to write out Tomohiro Ishii (despite the fact the bloke hasn't even wrestled since February!), I thought they'd have more people get taken out so the obvious route of it just being Mark Briscoe and the blokes he always tags with was off the table. Would Speedball have been any less credible in this match than Roderick Strong? 

I was exhausted by the main event and didn't really give it my full attention.

 

In terms of future direction, there's three episodes of Dynamite between now and Redemption. I assume Kenny vs. MJF headlines Redemption, with Kenny going over. It's MJF/Briscoe tonight, so that gives them two weeks to do MJF vs. Andrade for the title. The other possibility is that maybe they have Andrade earn a title shot, but have the match against Kenny at Grand Slam Mexico, and then get a non-title match against MJF either on TV or at All In. Though my sneaking suspicion is that MJF will be heading up a team for a Stadium Stampede match at All In, against a babyface team that includes Chris Jericho, Andrade, Darby Allin, Mark Briscoe, and Mick Foley.

I also assume that they wrap up the Ospreay/Death Riders story before All In, because it's a mad bit of heel/face ambiguity to have that faction hovering around the anointed babyface heading into his big "hometown" win, so my guess is Ospreay vs. Moxley at Redemption, though coming out of a PPV guessing that this will finally be the time that there's some kind of consequence for the Death Riders is a fool's game that I've been playing for a full calendar year at this point.

For the Women's belts, I assume Mercedes vs. Thekla for the main belt, Willow vs. Statlander (or maybe Hikaru Shida?) for the TBS Title, and Brawling Birds vs. Divine Dominion for the Tag Titles.

My guess for the men's Tag Titles is Cage & Cope vs. FTR vs. Young Bucks in a ladder match, with the Young Bucks winning and the New Day debuting after the match for a face-off. No idea for all the other men's belts - presumably Takeshita vs. Fletcher.

Edited July 1 by BomberPat

[Statto]

1 hour ago, westlondonmist said:

They showed with Forbidden Door you can get your big names into 1 match, or many of them anyway. 

That is true - but I view that as a (slight) negative a lot of the time too. 

They did Stadium Stampede on the last PPV and Death's Door here, which were very similar in terms of structure/feel other than there being a round cage this time. And if @BomberPat right and they do another Stadium Stampede at Wembley, that'd be 3 of the last 4 PPVs having one of those - with Andrade in all 3!

You're 100% spot on on match duration, mind.

[SoloJones]

I skipped some matches, but was Taz on commentary at all? Is he still recovering from surgery? He's leaps and bounds above the mostly awful Nigel McGuinness.

[DavidB6937]

Forbidden Door always feels like the most AEW indie auto mode PPV for me. Like those old ROH Global Wars ones or whatever they were called. Nothing wrong with them but it's all very random trying to promote a crossover show (with minimal crossover) while still doing your own thing along the way, and therefore it ends up a completely muddled non-entity in some ways. Great wrestling but very much a 'let's just get through this' feeling rather than it actually being important.

[westlondonmist]

45 minutes ago, Statto said:

That is true - but I view that as a (slight) negative a lot of the time too. 

They did Stadium Stampede on the last PPV and Death's Door here, which were very similar in terms of structure/feel other than there being a round cage this time. And if @BomberPat right and they do another Stadium Stampede at Wembley, that'd be 3 of the last 4 PPVs having one of those - with Andrade in all 3!

You're 100% spot on on match duration, mind.

Yeah I think the whole stampede thing is a tad overdone but there are other ways such as Casino Battle Royale, a general 6 man tag or scramble matches. I look back to early 90's WWF (yeah I know) and PPVs might have the champ in a tag match. I get that was usually to build towards house show feuds but why not have something like that to help build long term feuds? I suppose Forbidden Door showed teh main event doesn't need to be the World Title and it doesn't need to be defended on every PPB, I've felt before Toni Storm could easily have main evented a PPV while she was champion and I'm not sure Thekla is far off that, with the right person obviously. The Continental Classic final could probably main event a PPV too.

[Statto]

18 minutes ago, SoloJones said:

I skipped some matches, but was Taz on commentary at all? Is he still recovering from surgery? He's leaps and bounds above the mostly awful Nigel McGuinness.

No Taz on this one - the logic TK gave on how they'll use the commentary rotation for the next little while is Taz likely won't ever travel to the west coast (where this show was) and Danielson probably won't go to east coast shows (although he's been absent entirely for a little while now) just to ease the travel burden on their respectively battered bodies.

Will be interesting to see if either/both come to Wembley on that basis.

[LaGoosh]

5 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I do wonder why they don't do a lot more with Mistico, though - he's massively over, a genuine star, and absolutely brilliant, yet he never really does much but be an extra body in a multi-man, when he could easily be a title contender against a heel champion for an episode of Dynamite, or even a PPV with the right build and in the right location. I assume it's probably CMLL being precious about not wanting him losing singles matches.

Agreed. They could and should have booked Mistico vs Ricochet. 

Ricochet is a perfect heel foil for someone like Mistico. The match would have been great, Ricochet would have done the job and everyone leaves happy.

[WyattSheepMask]

Finally got round to finishing this last night, and even the I skipped parts of it.

I enjoyed Swerve v Osprey, but as we’ve talked about in the AEW TV thread, the booking of Osprey at the moment is all over the place and even in this match he came across as a heel at certain points. 

Which got me thinking - everything seems to be pointing to Osprey taking the title at All In, but what if he turns into a full blown heel at the end? And going All In as it were with the Death Riders.
For all the talk of it being a dream to be the first Englishman to win a World title in England etc, and if they are putting the belt on Omega at Redemption next month, having Osprey so desperate to achieve this “dream” of winning the World title at Wembley, what if he does so by doing so by any means necessary (insert NoD gif here) and doing so over someone who’s been a foe and a friend at different times.

Probably won’t happen, but I’d way more interested in Osprey as a heel than a face 

Edited July 1 by WyattSheepMask

[Merzbow]

3 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

And going All In as it were with the Death Riders.

Oh god, not stretching out the Deathriders story even longer... I could maybe see it working if it's leading to a hostile takeover and Mox ends up kicked out of his own group although I thought they were going to go down the "the rest turn on Mox" route ages ago.