Forbidden Door Was Pro Wresting Greatness

WOW! What a hell of a show AEW and NJPW put on with the second Forbidden Door Pay-Per-View. Once again, Tony Khan puts on another masterclass of a show that featured awesome match after awesome match. There is a nitpicky thing that I will address further in this piece, but this show was fantastic. The obvious highlight of the night was Omega vs. Ospreay 2 for the IWGP United States Championship. It was a forty-minute violent classic that I hope gets run back at Wembly Stadium in two months.

Omega and Ospreay showed once again that they are two of the greatest wrestlers of this generation. This match had it all. It had wrestling, it had lucha libre high flying style, it was violent, it continued an ongoing story, and it was full of drama until the very end. I have not seen a lot of Ospreay’s work, but he damn sure had my attention against Omega. As for Omega, I mean, it’s Kenny Omega. He has proven that he can do it all and if you think he sucks, then I don’t know what to tell you. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if you think Omega isn’t one of best performers of all time, then I’m entitled to the opinion that you’re crazy. If both men are up for it, then I hope they do the rubber match of this feud at All In. It writes itself. BCC and the Elite are likely going to wrap up their feud with Blood and Guts soon, so Omega can turn his attention to Takeshita and then Ospreay at All In.

As for the BCC, they lost to the Elite at Forbidden Door. I believe we are headed to Blood and Guts sometime in July, then, regardless of who wins, the major feud coming out of that match will be Moxley vs. Kingston. I am SO HAPPY that Kingston is back on AEW television in a major feud for the first time since last summer when his momentum came to a grinding halt after losing to Jericho. A year later, I still believe that Kingston should’ve won his feud with Jericho and had moved onto another high-profile feud. After he lost to Jericho, Kingston was supposed to feud with Sammy Guevara, but they got into a well-documented scuffle backstage that resulted in Kingston being taken off the show for a while. He didn’t do anything of note after he returned, then he moved to ROH and feuded with Claudio Castagnoli for the ROH World Championship. He lost that match and had hernia surgery taking him out of action until he came back on Dynamite a few weeks ago to confront Jon Moxley. It certainly looks like Moxley vs. Kingston will be a major match at All In or All Out or maybe both depending on how the story plays out.

Now to my nitpick. Tony’s PPVs are way too long. It was clear that the crowd was tired after the Ospreay/Omega match. They were still into the last two matches, but there was a very noticeable loss of energy. One of the major reasons WWE hasn’t put on a bad PPV (or PLE) since Triple H took over creative is that no show has gone over 8 matches. The shows feel leaner and more energetic for the entire night because the crowd isn’t getting tired out. Including the preshow, Forbidden Door was 5 hours long and had 14 matches. That’s just too much. Before WWE made WrestleMania two nights, those shows were running for 7 hours (!!!). Tony needs to trim the fat from his PPVs, like WWE has, so that his audience isn’t gassed by the main event.

Besides my small complaint, I can’t say enough about how much I loved Forbidden Door. MJF and Tanahashi had a good match, CM Punk went full heel in front of the Toronto crowd, the 4-way was fun, Storm/Nightengale was cool, the trios match was okay, Jungle Boy’s heel turn was awesome, and I enjoyed Danielson vs. Okada. Like I said earlier though, the match of the night, and maybe of the year, was Omega vs. Ospreay 2. It deserves all the praise and all the stars. RUN IT BACK, TONY. WEMBLEY. ALL IN. DO IT!!