AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door review: Swerve & Ospreay’s incredible night

Image: AEW

Heading into the main event, AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door had been a pretty darn good show filled with plenty of good to great matches. 

By the end of the night, most people will only remember one match.

Will Ospreay and AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland ended up having a match of the year contender with some of the best work out of either man. Their timing was top notch, there were some absolutely crazy moves (that Swerve dive to the outside on Ospreay looked like it HURT) and the crowd, which had been hot and cold all night, came unglued for the final few moments. Those moments saw Ospreay kick out of everything but he eventually could not kick out any longer, giving Strickland a huge win.

Whenever you see an online troll yell into the ether that AEW matches are nothing but glorified spot fests, I feel matches like this make them look like idiots. Anyone can go out there and do the moves these two did. What makes matches like these special are the participants involved, how they do the moves, when to do the moves, what to do in between, and reading the crowd to know what to do next. It’s so hard to pull off something special like this, and these two not only succeeded, but left the match even bigger stars than they were when they walked in.

I do have to mention part of the finish involved Don Callis giving Ospreay the Kenny Omega screwdriver to use on Swerve. He rejected it, probably starting the course for their eventual separation. I guess that could keep him busy in July, leading to August or September where it seems like he and MJF are inevitable.

Here is the rest of Forbidden Door, which was another great pay-per-view from AEW:

• Tetsuya Naito winning the IWGP title from Jon Moxley was surprisingly boring. For whatever reason, Naito didn’t feel like doing much and it felt like he was moving at a slow speed for the entire match. Most Moxley matches have a sense of intensity to them — something this one lacked. Their match at NJPW Windy City Riot earlier this year was way better. It didn’t help that the crowd fell asleep for this one.
• Mercedes Mone is now a double champion, defeating Stephanie Vaquer for the NJPW Strong Women’s Championship. This was good, even though the crowd weirdly hated Mone by the end of the match. I guess they just decided she was to blame for the Celtics winning the NBA title or something. Vaquer has really made a name for herself in the last year when she faced Mone, so this was a cool full circle moment.
• I did a poll during this match asking if the ladder match is used too much in pro wrestling. The answer is yes as after this ladder match, there will be two more next weekend and probably lots of other ones will take place before the year is over. With that said, I have to say the match to crown a new TNT Champion was absolutely wild. Mark Briscoe did some insane things that have to be seen to be believed. Jack Perry ended up winning the title, and probably will hold it for a while as all members of The Elite are now wearing gold.
• Samoa Joe, Hook and Katsuyori Shibata defeated Chris Jericho, his redwood Big Bill, and Jeff Cobb. This was perfectly fine action, but it was hard to follow the other matches on the card. It mostly made me want to see Cobb and Joe have a match somewhere, hopefully sooner than later. Hook pinning Jericho clean with his own finish makes sense as the singles rematch is likely for Wembley.
• I loved seeing Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Orange Cassidy. Sabre’s style of technical wrestling is always fun to watch and Cassidy kept up with him every step of the way. They had a Sabre-style technical bout and Cassidy kept up with him every step of the way. This was probably my favorite match of the show up to that point in the show.
• Toni Storm retained the AEW Women’s title once more, defeating Stardom’s Mina Shirakawa. This was another great PPV performance by Storm who is finding the groove in having good matches while also keeping in line with her current gimmick. It helps that Shirakawa is very good and the crowd were invested in seeing these two wrestle. In the end, Mariah May didn’t have to choose either lady as everyone kissed and made up after the match, literally. Good for them.
• Unsurprisingly, Bryan Danielson and Shingo Takagi had an excellent, heated match with Danielson scoring the win in an Owen Hart tournament match with a brutal-looking armbar. Danielson is telling the story that he is banged up and doesn’t have much time left, but can still pull off wins when they matter. I feel like it has to be him and Strickland for the title at Wembley.
• The Elite taking on “Scissor Ace” Hiroshi Tanahashi was good, especially when Okada and Tanahashi were involved. It was like watching their greatest hits and that’s never a bad thing. I actually was expecting The Acclaimed to get a win here ahead of their title match against The Young Bucks, but it didn’t happen.
• MJF defeating Hechicero in the opener was good while it lasted. It was mainly a match to put MJF over in his hometown area, and not much else.

Next up for AEW is what I believe is now their own version of WrestleMania: August’s All In from Wembley Stadium in London. The pieces are starting to come together, so hopefully they play out over the next couple of months. One of the things AEW needs to solve is making the TV just as engaging as the pay-per-views. They’ve struggled with that in recent months, but with their biggest show of the year coming up this might be the best time to really flesh out the stories they’ve been telling.