BRM Reviews AEW Forbidden Door 2023

[Big Red Machine]

AEWxNJPW Forbidden Door 2023 (6/25/2023)- Toronto, ON


Kevin Kelly, Taz, and Excalibur are your commentary team tonight. I’d have much rather had Nigel McGuinness, Caprice Coleman, or Ian Riccaobini than Kevin Kelly, but at least I won’t have to spend the whole night listening to Tony Schiavone blithering.

AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH: MJF(c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi- 7/10
Having two ring announcers does help to make this feel more like a co-promoted show (rather than what it really is, which is AEW bringing in NJPW guys for their show), but as a viewer, it’s really annoying to have the entrances last twice as long as they need to.
Getting “additional leverage” from grabbing the rope in an Octopus Stretch doesn’t make any sense at all. Everyone stop doing it. Making things worse, they used that spot to establish that 1) the referee doesn’t want to disqualify MJF, and 2) MJF doesn’t give a sh*t if he does get disqualified… so why didn’t he just start blatantly cheating from that point on (especially given that the storyline going into this match is that he didn’t think Tanahashi deserves a title shot and only gave him one because he was goaded into it)?
That one issue aside, I really liked this… up until the finish, but I’ll get to that in a moment. The majority of this match was your basic Tanahashi match- he works the knee and tries to hit the High Fly Flow- but at MJF’s pacing rather than the frustratingly repetitive New Japan match that turns into “spurts of offense, then we’re both down to sell for three minutes, then get up and do it again.” I much prefer my big double-downs spaced out so that they don’t feel so formulaic.
Then we got to the finish, which… uch. If you’re not going to have a rematch, there is almost no reason for MJF not to win cleanly (and if NJPW won’t let their over-the-hill star who they have already replaced at the top of the card lose cleanly to your young top star world champion, are they really worthwhile partners to have?), and absolutely no reason for Tanahashi to be getting a visual pinfall on MJF first. NONE. And, again, we have MJF managing to cheat to win not purely because he outsmarted the referee and the babyface, but rather because the referee was negligent and didn’t check him for weapons before the match, even though he cheats with the same weapon that he hides in the same spot every time.


OWEN HART FOUNDATION MEN’S TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Satoshi Kojima vs. CM Punk- 7/10
*Pulls up video of Punk impersonating Homicde* Lariat. Lariat. Kojima. Lariat.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of our system… Punk got a very mixed reaction coming out… but then again, there were points in the previous match where it was 50-50, and that’s a match with the consummate babyface vs. the consummate heel. I’m not sure if that makes Punk’s mixed reaction mean more or mean less.
Excalibur claimed that Punk was inspired by Bret and Owen, which is plausible, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard Punk say it before. He also claimed that Kojima went on a learning excursion and spent two months in Calgary, where he trained at the dungeon and became very close with the Harts. This didn’t smell right to me, simply due to the timing, so I looked it up… and found absolutely no evidence that it ever happened. There is an odd gap of a few months in his results in early 1995 (although this was before he went to Germany, not afterwards as Excalibur claimed), but it seems odd to me that he would be on a learning excursion and not be wrestling for months.
Punk played the subtle heel, and the fans mostly treated him as such (although there was still a vocal contingent who were on his side). Punk won cleanly, so he will go on to face either Samoa Joe or Roderick Strong. I had completely forgotten that Roddy even worked for AEW, and he only debuted two months ago.

AEW INTERNATIONAL TITLE MATCH: Orange Cassidy(c) vs. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Daniel Garcia- 7.25/10
This big title match started off with… Orange Cassidy bullsh*t. Garcia now has some stupid, goofy dance move or something that he inserts and completely inappropriate times in matches. And the same fans who would later chant “YOU’RE A WRESTLER!” at him cheered whenever he did this stupid thing.
The spot with the running boots culminating in the four-way boot was WAY too cutesy. Other than that, I thought there was great action and excellent intensity here… but with one important caveat:
Whatever story they are trying to tell with Orange Cassidy being worn down over time by his various injuries is ruined for me every time he does his stupid schtick. A champion being worn down should be desperate to retain his title. He should press any advantage he can take, and not take pointless risks like sticking his hands in his pockets or doing light kicks to the shin that won’t hurt anyone. Pro wrestling is, first and foremost, a storytelling art. If getting your sh*t in works against the story you are trying to tell, you don’t get your sh*t in.
OC won, pinning Garcia with the Mouse Trap. Try not to be too surprised that the only guy who didn’t have a belt was the one to get pinned. After the match, Zack confronted OC, then Shibata got involved to make it a three-way face-off. Zack walked off, leaving OC and Shibata together, who showed mutual respect.

IWGP WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Sanada(c) (w/DOUKI) vs. “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry (w/Hook)- 6.75/10
Apparently in New Japan, a title can change hands on a DQ or a count-out. That makes me even more infuriated that these f*cking New Japan referees let the heels get away with breaking the rules right in front of them all the time. First of all, it’s completely f*cking idiotic that we’re supposed to see DQs and count-outs as some sort of less decisive finish to the point where referees will completely ignore the rules just to avoid calling for one because that would be “disappointing,” but that the rules themselves will allow a title to change hands on this supposedly less decisive finish. Secondly, this completely erases the defense of allowing a heel champion to blatantly cheat because to call for a DQ would just be giving him what he wants because he gets out of the match and retains his title (and even that defense is flimsy because the counter-argument to it is simply that this wouldn’t be an issue if the promotion would do its job and take steps to ensure fair play, like adding stipulations to prevent whatever shenanigans cheated the babyface in his previous challenge) because apparently that’s not even true. Can someone do me a favor and go back through my reviews and take 0.25 off of basically every title defense by a heel in New Japan since 2015?
Speaking of things that infuriated me, early on, Sanada got Jungle Boy in the inescapable Paradise Lock… but instead of just stomping on Jungle Boy’s exposed and defenseless head until the referee stopped the match or Jungle Boy was knocked unconscious, Sanada gave Jungle Boy a dropkick to the butt, which released the move. What a f*cking idiot.
Excalibur started talking about Jungle Boy being at a disadvantage because “he doesn’t know the cadence of Umino’s count.” If he’s competent (which, Red Shoes isn’t, but we’re not supposed to think about that fact), he should be keeping a steady cadence. Once Jungle Boy hears how far apart one and two are, he’ll know how far apart the other numbers will be. It really pisses me off when announcers say dumb sh*t in an attempt to sound smart instead of doing their jobs and calling the f*cking match.
Anyway, they did stuff. There was something that felt like it was supposed to be a story about Jungle Boy trying to use Sanada’s moves, which was supposed to be disrespectful for pro wrestling reasons that never made too much sense to me, and we’re supposed to read into that as such because the conventional wisdom is that Jungle Boy is going heel, even though the only real evidence for that isn’t kayfabe evidence so much as it is just noticing a goofy wrestling trope that when you call someone your best friend out of nowhere, it means you’re going to turn on them, so that whole thing felt very random and didn’t really work for me. Sanada won cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Jungle Boy and Hook walked up the ramp together and posed, but then someone aimed an evil-ray and Jungle Boy that made him evil, so he attacked Hook and started taunting the fans with his old entrance cheer. This whole thing is very out of nowhere (as I said above, there was no kayfabe sign anything like this was coming, just invoking a trope), and while that can be fine sometimes, it really doesn’t work for me when you follow up what it supposed to be a spur of the moment decision to turn with taunting the fans by doing your old cheer. That’s the sort of thing that makes a turn feel premeditated, as it indicated a direction for the new heel character.
Jungle Boy picked up Hook’s FTW Title, looked at it, then threw it at Hook. If that’s the belt he is going for, then this heel turn was criminally rushed. The story there is the story of Jungle Boy’s jealousy of Hook being a champion and frustration with his own inability to win a title despite vowing to do so by the end of the year. First of all, it’s only the end of June, so I just don’t buy that the previously goody-two-shoes Jungle Boy would be frustrated enough to do something like that. Secondly, you need to build to that moment by giving the jealousy and frustration time to build up. We need to see Jungle Boy failing to win a title more than just twice, and- more importantly- we need to see Jungle Boy at ringside watching on while Hook successfully defends his title week after week. These guys haven’t even been back together for a month, and in that time Hook hasn’t defended his title once. What they should have done was build Jungle Hook up as a team in the background while this silly Blind Draw tournament or whatever they’re calling it is going on while also having Hook regularly defend his title in singles matches while Jungle Boy fails win singles titles. You culminate this in them each having singles matches at All In (with Hook retaining his title and Jungle Boy losing a title match), then having them unsuccessfully challenge for the tag titles at All Out, with Hook getting pinned and Jungle Boy turning on him after that (and even that might be a little too early in the year but there is only one PPV between that point and the end of the year, so if you want to get the Jungle Boy vs. Hook match on PPV, you need to do it then).



EDDIE KINGSTON, TOMOHIRO ISHII, & THE ELITE (Adam Page & the Young Bucks) vs. SHOTA UMINO, KONOSUKE TAKESHITA, & BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB (Jon Moxley, Wheeler YUTA, & Claudio Castagnoli)- 6/10
Taz went to the back to check on Hook after that vicious… one clothesline that Hook took. He was replaced by Tony Schiavone on commentary. This company employs f*cking Nigel McGuinness. There is no excuse for Schiavone being sent out to do commentary. Schiavone has all of Kevin Kelly’s bad instincts and none of his knowledge.
Kevin Kelly said that Shota Umino “has literally been on fire in New Japan.” False.
They wasted that forearm knockout shot on Ishii. That should have been a f*cking finish.
Kevin Kelly also said that New Japan lets Red Shoes referee Shota Umino’s matches. THAT SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. This is just more evidence that New Japan doesn’t give a sh*t about fair play or integrity. They just want the fans’ money. What a bunch of scumbags.

Anyway, this was twenty-twenty minutes of random action. The only attempt at a story was the stuff with Kingston and Moxley, which mostly sucked, because it came off as forced, fake drama. As I said previously, with everything we have been told about Eddie Kingston, I just don’t plain buy that he never called Moxley up at some point while his feud with Claudio was starting to demand to know why Moxley was hanging out with these people who were being assholes to him, and it is even less believable to me that that didn’t happen at any point since Kingston made his return a week and a half ago and those two had their big face-off.
Then we got the f*cking coup de grace of fake drama stupidity when King pushed Moxley out of the way of a double-superkick. He himself was willing to punch Moxley before, but G-d forbid the Young Bucks should superkick Moxley. And if Kingston is so protective of Moxley that he will push Moxley out of the way of a double-superkick in a match where and Moxley are on opposite teams, why hasn’t he run down to ringside to help Moxley for every post-match brawl Moxley has been involved in? Or, you know, made any effort to stop anyone from hitting Moxley at any other point during this match?
Ishii pinned YUTA to get the win for his team… except he was a random guest who was in this match because it’s a crossover show with New Japan, so for the second PPV in a row, this feud gave us a big tag team match where at the end it felt like absolutely nothing was resolved. Kingston’s partners were not happy with him after the match. He’s lucky they didn’t beat him to a bloody pulp.

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE MATCH: Toni Storm(c) (w/the Outcasts) vs. Willow Nightingale- 5.75/10
Toni cheated to win, but of course nothing will be done to give Willow any kind of rematch. The match was not very interesting or exciting.

IWGP UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH: Kenny Omega(c) vs. Will Ospreay (w/Don Callis)- 6.75/10
If you know my preferences already, you’ll understand that there was a lot in this match that bothered me and made it very hard for me to enjoy. If you don’t know my preferences, I’ve made an effort to explain why I didn’t like so much of this match, but be warned: There will be ranting, and I will be focusing a lot more on the stuff I didn’t like than the stuff I liked (which, quite frankly, can mostly be summed up as just “action”).
Callis got ejected early on, so he wasn’t a factor. They did a big spot where Ospreay slammed Omega’s head into the announcers’ table like Omega did to him at Wrestle Kingdom. That was a very good spot (although when Ospreay took it off later and ran Kenny’s head into it, it looked so flimsy that I didn’t buy that it could bust Kenny open, never mind hurt him at all when it wasn’t attached to the table. Schiavone’s claim that there were nails sticking out of it might have worked if the side that Ospreay had run Kenny’s head into had been the side where nails would logically be, rather than the outside of the thing).
What wasn’t great was the five minutes or so (at least that’s what it felt like) that followed of Paul Turner telling Ospreay to get back into the ring. JUST F*CKING START COUNTING THEM OUT! I know this seems like a minor thing to people, and I’m not going to pretend that I’m going to knock an entire ratings point off for it or anything like that, but it really does take me out of a match to give me stretches of time like this where nothing happening other than someone posing rather than following up (without a real storyline reason to do so… and if what the announcers told us about Ospreay’s desire to beat Omega is to be believed, this is extremely foolish of him), and all I am being given to focus on is as referee acting in a way that a referee would never act unless that referee were part of an act with a pre-determined finish. Would it really have been that hard for Ospreay to just go pose and act all cocky inside the ring, then roll back out again?
Ospreay doing the Shawn Michaels stuff with the Canadian flag was a big misstep for me. You want to do something to the flag? Fine. But to do the stuff that Shawn Michaels was famous for doing makes it feel like you’re play-acting or artistically referencing something rather than doing something because of real emotions.
Idiot referee Paul Turner let Ospreay bring the flag into the ring, so of course Omega wound up choking him with it and using it to throw him around. That’s using a foreign object. That should be a DQ. There is no reason for it not to be one, unless, of course, there is a pre-determined finish, and the whole point of pro wrestling is to not f*cking expose that fact. And, again, what did doing these spots do the for the match? NOTHING. Do you not think the crowd would have popped just as hard if Ospreay hadn’t been holding the flag when Omega clotheslined him and started that big hope spot?
Excalibur repeated the bullsh*t line that the referee is using his discretion “because nobody wants to see a match like this end in a disqualification.” Clearly someone does, or else it wouldn’t be a f*cking rule, would it? And what kind of stupid f*cking logic is “no one wants to see this match end in a DQ, therefore the referee shouldn’t call for a DQ,” anyway? Nobody wanted to see MJF beat Tanahashi earlier, either. Should the referee have just ignored all of his pinfalls and fast-counted whenever Tanahashi had MJF pinned?
Kevin Kelly gave his best shot at defending this bullsh*t by claiming that “professional wrestling was plagued by disqualifications all throughout the eighties.” The problem with that statement is that it only makes sense outside of the context of kayfabe. At no point during Wonder Woman did Gal Gadot turn to the camera and tell us that “for many years in Hollywood, women were not allowed to be action heroes, but look at me, I’m being a badass action here right now.” “Pro wrestling” the kayfabe sport was not plagued by DQs. The DQs made sense in the context of the premise. Blade running was an excellent movie even though it lacked a female action lead. Alien was an excellent move that had a female action lead, but the fact that it had a female action lead is not what made it a great movie. Both were great movies because they told great stories in great environments. A great pro wrestling match tells a story, and everyone’s actions make sense within the f*cking premise of pro wrestling: that this is a competitive sport with rules. A wrestling match is not great- or even better than it otherwise would have been- just because it doesn’t have DQs!
In fact, sometimes a match would have been better if it had ended in a DQ, because it works well with the story being told, and it comes in a situation where not doing a DQ hurts the match by ignoring the premise. The Young Bucks vs. Golden Lovers match at Strong Style Evolved is a perfect example of this.
Anyway, they ignored more rules. If the referee won’t count them out or call for a DQ, why doesn’t Don Callis just come back out here?
Ospreay bled a lot. Omega gave him a DDT onto the steps. I think by that point they had been on the outside for about three straight minutes without any attempt being made to count them out.
They traded moves for a bit. Ospreay went for a Sharpshooter- a move he never uses- despite having barely worked over the body parts it targets, because… it’s Canada and he’s trying to get heat so his match will have a better star rating or whatever. Why should Will Ospreay, the kayfabe character- give a sh*t? This is the sort of thing that doesn’t make a match better; it makes a match worse, because it makes it obvious that the wrestlers involved are putting on a performance to try to gain my adulation and to show me a good time rather than doing what they’re supposed to be doing and trying to win a match. Like the Shawn Michaels flag references, it is immersion-breaking. The crossface spot that came after that was great because it worked with the story they were telling me. The Sharpshooter spot worked against it
Callis eventually did come back out… and the referee did nothing. Way to enforce the rules there, buddy. He wouldn’t even disqualify Callis when he got physically involved. And look at this. Callis gave Ospreay a weapon, which Ospreay used on Omega. At this point, how am I supposed to be angry at Callis and Ospreay for cheating when said cheating could have been prevented by the referee if he had just done his f*cking job and called for a DQ?
Kenny got his foot on the ropes after a screwdriver stab to the head, followed by a Strombreaker. Ospreay then hit Omega with a V-Trigger and a One-Winged Angel, and Kenny kicked out at one. That was a great spot, but it would have been even better if the match hadn’t done so much to break my immersion, because at that point I wasn’t excited that Kenny kept fighting and was motivated by Callis and Ospreay’s attempt to humiliate him by beating him with his own moves. It came across to me like a well-constructed spot, and that’s it. I could appreciate its artistic value, but there was no emotion or investment.
They traded more moves until Ospray murdered Omega with a Tiger Driver 91. Kenny still kicked out. Ospreay then hit a Hidden Blade and a Stormbreaker for the win. How is that a better finish than the f*cking murder move? Call an audible! So, in conclusion, I’m not saying this was a bad match by any stretch. But I found it very hard to enjoy, and thus my rating is a lot lower than basically everyone else’s. Their match at the Tokyo Dome was vastly superior to this one.

So Ospreay cheats to win… and now we have Kevin Kelly telling us that this is somehow him “stepping into the shoes that Kenny Omega left for him to fill.” F*CK OFF. That’s like a draft bust suddenly hitting forty home runs, then getting caught corking his bat and Kevin Kelly just keeps talking about how he has finally blossomed into the power hitter we all knew he could be. Is there some way I can get this PPV without the announcers? Or at least with Kelly and Schiavone muted? I really don’t want them to ruin Danielson vs. Okada for me.

DARBY ALLIN, STING, & TETSUYA NAITO vs. MINORU SUZUKI & LE SEX GODS (Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara)- 5/10
I was amused that Sting was able to put a Canadian in a Sharpshooter and get cheered for it. This match was mostly just there. It was also the only match on the show where the New Japan presence really felt like an intrusion, and the match felt smaller because of it, despite the magnitude of Suzuki and Naito’s names. It felt like they were tacked on to what should have been Darby & Sting vs. Jericho & Sammy.
They built to a spot where Jericho put Sting on a table and wanted Sammy Guevara to dive on him but Sammy didn’t want to do it because… um… because that’s how his character was booked to react. This would work if Sammy wasn’t someone who regularly did high-risk moves. What makes this more dangerous than any other dive out of the ring that he does four times a week?
Sammy eventually gave in and did it, and it worked out fine for him. In fact, it worked out so well that Aubrey Edwards didn’t disqualify him for doing so even though she watched the whole thing. Naito eventually pinned Suzuki after a very meh double-team with Sting and a pin on Suzuki that didn’t look very good.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Jericho attacked Naito with a bat. Sting made the save, getting the bat away from Jericho and hitting Jericho with it. This felt like an effort to redirect the attention to where it would have been without the distraction of Suzuki and Naito.

BRYAN DANIELSON vs. KAZUCHIKA OKADA- 8.5/10
This was an excellent PPV main event with each guy working over a body part and they had good intensity and the finish was sick, but this match just… wasn’t what I had built up in my head, I guess. This Maybe that’s on me for having expectations that were too high, but… it’s DANIELSON VS. OKADA. What we got was excellent, but it wasn’t what it needed to be, which was special.


This show managed to both disappoint and impress me at the same time. I’m sure most people liked certain matches a lot more than I did, and between the main event being “merely” awesome and the fact that this was a PPV, it left me disappointed. And, of course, the announcers often made me want to punch a wall. But there was a large chunk of this show at the beginning that was enjoyable match after enjoyable match, and the card itself, both the way it was put together and the way it fit into the current storyline, gave me a happy nostalgic feeling that reminded me of the glory days of ROH. Or, more specifically, the glory days of Gabe Sapolsky’s ROH (Pearce also had a great run, and Delirious was also very good to great until about mid-2015).
This show- especially in comparison with last year’s show or the main ROH/NJPW crossover shows we got during Delirious’ run- felt like something Gabe would have booked. Not as one of the tippy-top major shows like Final Battle or Death Before Dishonor or Glory by Honor, but that next level down that uses everyone well, has some matches that will definitely sell a bunch of DVDs, and either maintains or ramps up storylines in a minor to mid-level way. This was one of the Chicago Spectacular shows or Fighting Spirit or A New Level or Vendetta II.
That might be part of why this show feels a little disappointing to me- because it’s one of AEW’s few PPVs a year, and instead of a show full of big resolutions, we got small developments and maintenance booking. But we got a show full of mostly interesting matches, and the New Japan talent was almost all used in ways that serviced an existing AEW story (Naito and Suzuki being the only exceptions; they felt like they were just tacked onto something), which is something that last year’s show and the many ROH/NJPW shows over the years completely failed at doing. Quite frankly, I didn’t think Tony Khan had it in him to book a show like this. Good for Tony.