Forbidden Door review

On the same day that Total Nonstop Action presented their Slammiversary pay-per-view, All Elite Wrestling run their Forbidden Door event, a co-promoted show with New Japan Pro Wrestling. In what was probably unavoidable given the current status of the Japanese league, this was probably the weakest build to this specific event since it started as an annual tradition a few years ago. The bottom line is, the Forbidden Door PPV often became an unintentional audition for New Japan talent in front of an AEW audience, and it didn't take long for Tony Khan to sign away almost every top star that NJPW had. Hopefully, the acquisition by Cyber Fight, the parent company of DDT, NOAH, and Tokyo Joshi Pro, will be able to bolster New Japan, but right now, the company is low on true star power and the line-up reflected that.

Don't get me wrong the clash between two different organization's best wrestlers can be a money-drawing concept. The problem is, if it becomes a yearly event, you eventually run out of "dream matches" to fuel the theme of the show. With a nine-match card, you knew that this broadcast was going to stretch over the four-hour mark, which simply isn't an ideal viewing experience on a Sunday night. You shouldn't have to kick yourself Monday morning for spending $50 on a wrestling pay-per-view that ran until after midnight. However, it's even more of an issue when the broadcast ran until almost 1 AM on the east coast.

Overall, this pay-per-view, similar to almost every AEW PPV, was a mixed bag. It gave you the quality action you expected, some of it was overkill, and some of it could've been saved for television so that the viewers could attempt to get to sleep by a decent hour. It sounds trivial, but only the most diehard demographic of wrestling fans are going to be thrilled to get to bed after midnight, and that's often the portion of the audience that the brand caters to, but the goal should theoretically be to get a bigger audience to spend $50 for these pay-per-views.

The opening three-way tag team match was a fun segment and it gave the viewers the fireworks show that they anticipated for this type of contest. This is the portion of the card that you can put the objective to progress the storylines aside for 15 minutes and let these guys thrill the audience with the high spots and dives. There's nothing wrong with that either, this type of contest has a place on the card, it just gets repetitive, tedious, and yields diminishing returns when it's overdone during the course of a specific PPV. The Young Bucks received some rightful criticism in recent years when their heel runs fell woefully flat, but they can still deliver spectacular bouts when that's what a segment is designed for. They got the win after they hit the Meltzer driver on Titan to get the pin.

As I said, there's a limited amount of "dream matches" that can be touted for a yearly event, and while Kenny Omega and Zack Sabre Jr. have wrestled before, since Sabre Jr. is one of the few key New Japan guys that Tony didn't sign, this bout had a level of anticipation around it. They gave the viewers a little bit of everything, starting of with some slick technical exchanges before they decided to exchange strikes and then took the series of big bumps that you'd expect from a New Japan main event. The problem is, this segment went over 25 minutes and it was only the second match of the night. They did the dramatic back and fourth sequences over an extended period of time, but when Omega finally landed the one-winged angel to get the victory, there was still almost four hours left of the show. This didn't need to be presented as an epic New Japan war of attrition, the overall show would've been better off if they kept it to a tight 15 minutes.   

As far as matches that could've been saved for Dynamite, specifically with the format of this event, the Jon Moxley/Bandido match appeared to be shoehorned onto the line-up just to get each of them on the pay-per-view. I understand that Moxley is a known star for his time in WWE, and Bandido is a tremendous performer, but again, when a show is going to run as long as this one did, a match that offers nothing toward the AEW vs/ New Japan package can be saved for a different time. It was somewhat of an odd match on paper because of the styles clash, but the match itself was fine. That said, they more or less repeated the structure of the contest that the audience just saw when they opened with technical exchanges, threw strikes, and went with the bigger spots toward the conclusion. The problem is, the result was already rendered rather pointless, as Bandido, despite being the Ring Of Honor champion, isn't necessarily seen in the same light as Moxley, particularly after he recently reformed the team with Brody King so it was obvious that Moxley was going to retain. We're going to see all the high spots and bumps throughout the rest of the card so if a segment doesn't progress something within the scope of the product, the argument could be made that it wasn't needed for this pay-per-view. I understand the tradition of tearing the mask to bleed in lucha libre, but the Moxley/Bandido match wasn't something that justified that. It wasn't a long-term blood feud or anything that needed blood in the segment, especially when there was a steel cage match later. As expected, Moxley got the win to retain the title with the submission.

In a similar fashion, Pac is on AEW programming so sporadic that it's difficult to realistically believe that he would capture the New Japan Global championship to possibly work a full schedule there.Shota Umino is a solid in-ring worker, but nothing too spectacular, and his main event push for the Tokyo Dome a few years ago garnered mixed reviews. This was another match that was fine in terms of the performance, as Pac's athleticism is almost impressive, but there just wasn't enough meat on the bone for this contest to have any major intrigue. Umino isn't a star and doesn't have the cache for his bouts to carry that type of importance to them, especially in front of an American crowd. For a one-off match, this was another segment that didn't need to go 20 minutes, which is roughly the same amount of time given to the previous contest. The power bomb over the top rope through a table wasn't needed either. This was another situation where this was structured as if it was going to be a main event, but there was still more than three hours of the show left.

Thekla vs. Starlight Kid was directly related to the premise of the pay-per-view, and Tony Khan did a decent job of building up Thekla's heel tactics in Japan for this segment to have the proper context. This was a very entertaining match and gave the crowd what they'd expect from a solid Joshi segment. I'd say that Starlight Kid might be a good addition to the AEW women's roster, but I have zero faith that she wouldn't eventually get lost in the shuffle of the witness protection plan of ROH so it's better that she stays in Japan. Thekla retained the AEW Women's title after she used a curb stomp to get the win.

The AEW Tag Team title match was fine, but at this point in the card, it was a situation where the length of the show impacted the viewing experience. There simply wasn't much to say about this bout other than it was solid segment. Jay White's return from injury was the biggest takeaway from it. Adam Copeland and Christian retained.

The Owen Hart Tournament women's final was somewhat underwhelming, as it was clunky and disjointed at certain points of the segment. At one point, Maya's hair extensions were loose, similar to the recent Jade Cargill situation, and she left the ring for a few minutes to fix it, which stalled any momentum the segment could've had. Furthermore, and this was almost unavoidable, there wasn't a point in this match where it looked like there was a realistic chance that Maya World was going to win. This isn't a jab at her at all, but she's still relatively unknown and new to most of the AEW audience so she's not seen, nor was she previously presented to be a contender on the level of Mercedes Mone. Sure, the argument could be made that the majority of Mone's All Elite career underachieved, but with the amount of money she's being paid, it only makes sense to put her in a featured spot at Wembley Stadium in August. It wasn't for a lack of effort, but this match never got into second gear because nobody believed that the upset was even remotely possible. This went 25 minutes and probably should've been given half that amount of time since it became tedious. Mone won via submission.

The cage match was the car crash segment that it was expected to be, which is fine since they didn't jump the shark nearly as much as they usually do for this type of bouts. Blood, tables, thumbtacks, and dives off the cage should've been the crescendo to the show, but the Owen Hart tournament men's final was after this. The stipulation of this match was that if Mark Briscoe's team won, he will get a title shot on television this week. The baby faces won so Briscoe vs. MJF will be on Dynamite, but this 30-minute car crash on pay-per-view was used to set up a predictable result for a television match.

The main event was more or less all of AEW's bad habits. This didn't start until almost 12:30 and after four and a half hours, this pay-per-view became a chore to watch rather than entertainment. This overdid everything in this segment after everything was already done earlier in the night. The ridiculous amount of blood added nothing, especially because Owen Hart was a technical wrestling legend so this match didn't represent the concept. The attempted dramatic pauses in the action missed the mark and didn't get over the theatrical presentation that they thought it would. The pace was rather slow, plodding, and almost unnecessary. But hey, Meltzer will give it six stars so it was successful, right? Don't get me wrong, the execution of the maneuvers was impressive, but that's not the issue. It was the wrong type of match for the tournament, with the wrong amount of time given, and at the wrong spot on the card. Ospreay got the win to get a title shot at Wembley Stadium. At some point, these five-hour pay-per-views because a reason for viewers to skip them rather than be literally invested in the broadcast through PPV orders. There's no booking logic for how to build a card, it's not about the overall presentation, the approach are individual matches in a vacuum, which hinders the overall event.