Even though last year I attended AEW’s Forbidden Door pay-per-view live at the O2 in London and had a great time, and this year’s Forbidden Door was a fantastic event which I not only thoroughly enjoyed watching on TV, but chose to watch above WWE’s Night of Champions, I have to confess, I hate Forbidden Door.

Yes, that’s right – you’re finally getting a Two Out of Three Falls column where I will be critical of AEW!

Forbidden Door began as a great idea.  Unlike rivals, WWE, who never mentioned competitor companies on TV unless Vince McMahon (or now parent company TKO) had bought them, AEW marked themselves out as different from the start by actively co-working with other wrestling promotions.  As random indie wrestlers, or stars of New Japan Pro Wrestling, CMLL, or TNA started to appear on AEW programming despite not being signed to AEW exclusively, commentators spoke of breaking down the “forbidden door” between companies and, as a fan watching, it was genuinely exciting to see who might turn up next.  When the first official Forbidden Door pay-per-view was announced in 2022, it therefore made sense.  A formal card of once in a lifetime dream matches you never thought you would see before put together by both New Japan and AEW to do something special and show how such partnerships can work successfully.  Some of us even saw it as a subtle fuck you to WWE, who had famously botched their own internal Invasion angle back in the day when, instead of a competitive and compelling WCW vs WWE war, we got a watered down and one-sided WWE squash against WCW in name only, supported by a limply resurrected ECW.  The first Forbidden Door was notable because instead of one company’s ego getting in the way we had a genuinely entertaining night of top quality wrestling in which both AEW and NJPW stars shone.

So what went wrong?

The first thing for me was making this event annual.  When the 2023 edition rolled around we were no longer filling a card with long-awaited dream matches, but with just a few dream matches and then a lot of matches made just to fill the card.  By 2024 the Forbidden Door stretched open further to make the event viable, adding wrestlers from Stardom and CMLL too, many of whom audiences in the US (and UK) had never heard of let alone dreamed about watching fight their favourite AEW originals.  By 2025, when I was in the audience, the pull was not the Forbidden Door specifically but the fact that it was replacing the previously annual UK AEW PPV, All In, at Wembley that year.  Most of us didn’t show up at the O2 because it was Forbidden Door, but because it was the only chance that year to see AEW live in the UK.  Or because we’d just got in the habit of seeing an AEW show in London during the August bank holiday.  Essentially the show lost its reason for existence and just became another show on the annual calendar, one with some new faces, or faces we only usually see once a year in AEW.  It reminded me of when WWE stopped adding exciting gimmick matches such as Hell in a Cell or Elimination Chamber to PPVs because the match made sense for a particular feud but, instead, named an annual PPV after that type of match and then just had a Hell in a Cell because it was Hell in a Cell season.  (Like how every November there’s always multi-person feuds building just in time for Survivor Series or War Games.  Factions in WWE don’t seem to bother each other in February or July).  In AEW these days, stars from other promotions don’t break down the forbidden door because it makes sense, they break it down because the Forbidden Door pay-per-view is coming up.

Which brings me to my other problem with the format.  Forbidden Door has become a season rather than a one-off event.  Because audiences need to know the feuds and see reasons for these people they’ve never or barely heard of to fight, they need to be introduced to the stars in advance.  So we start having random wrestlers pop up from NJPW, Stardom, CMLL, etc. for a few weeks before the PPV.  But this means we’ve already seen them wrestle before the event.  The original dream match anticipation has gone, and so has the idea that this PPV might be the only place to see these stars wrestle.  I just saw the whole cast wrestle on both Dynamite and Collision – why pay to see them on Sunday too?  Even worse, this year, “Forbidden Door season” lasted long after the event too, with several outside wrestlers still having matches on AEW TV weeks later simply because they were still in the country.

Don’t get me wrong – the matches were good, and the wrestlers are awesome.  But it dilutes any reason to think Forbidden Door is special as a PPV.  Better to just have occasional openings of the forbidden door between promotions across the year, and matches take place (on TV, on PPV) when they make sense and give the distinct Forbidden Door PPV format a rest.  After all, this year’s best matches were the AEW-only matches anyway: the finals of the Owen Hart tournament and the multi-man “Death’s Door” cage match.  Meanwhile Kenny Omega vs Zack Sabre Jnr would fit in brilliantly on literally any AEW pay-per-view at any time of year.

Which brings we to another reason I hate Forbidden Door these days: most of the best wrestlers who stepped through the door ended up staying in AEW and becoming All Elite.  Okada, Ospreay, Kyle Fletcher, Mistico, Jay White, Mina Shirakawa, Gabe Kidd, to name but a few.  Others, pop through to AEW so often since the door first opened that they feel like regulars rather than something special.  Zack Sabre Jnr, Minoru Suzuki, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Shingo Takagi, ELP, and Tomohiro Ishii have all had multiple matches now in AEW and feel like old friends.  Again – this is a good thing, and I like all these guys and love to watch them wrestle.  But it feels like they can come through and feud with someone in AEW at any time of year rather than just for a random month in June (or August if AEW decide to take a year off from Wembley).

AEW do a lot right, and every Forbidden Door PPV has been a great watch, but at the same time there has been a sense of diminishing returns each year and I feel it’s time to close the part of the forbidden door that leads to the eponymous pay-per-view.  At least for now.  I’d be very happy if they give it a few years while wrestlers from around the world show up in AEW, and AEW wrestlers show up elsewhere, and a scenario is built once again where genuine dream matches require a distinct stage in which they could take place.  Or, of course, if WWE ever decided to play ball and act like grown ups and the forbidden door opened wide enough to accommodate the only legitimate dream matches left: AEW stars vs the stars of WWE.  But until then, despite the lovely new circular cage they just debuted at this year’s event, I think it’s time to call time on this annual PPV in order to make it special again.

Until next time…

DaN McKee

www.everythingdanmckee.com

My book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, is available from Earth Island Books and wherever you get your reading material. You can also buy a copy of Hardcore Horror there and read my short story “a dull boy”.

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