Fuck Coldplay. Not because of their music (in fact, despite wanting to hate their shitty, vapid rock-lite pop I seem to enjoy most songs of theirs I end up hearing. Not enough to ever go out and buy any Coldplay, you understand, but enough to be pleasantly surprised and go was that Coldplay? Hmmm…Ok. Fair play…) And not because of their viral kiss-cam nonsense this summer either. No. Fuck Coldplay because when AEW started booking out Wembley Stadium August Bank Holiday weekend for All In in 2023, they started a fun tradition. But when it came time to book the stadium for the 2025 event it turned out Coldplay had got there first. All In went to Texas, in July, and the UK got Forbidden Door during the August Bank Holiday instead, this time at the O2 Arena.

I attended the first two All Ins in London. The first one quite ridiculously. My wife and I had already booked a summer holiday up in the Lake District that year, before Tony Khan announced the AEW UK debut. Realising we would be somewhere in Windermere on the day AEW came to London, we hatched a crazy plan. We’d ditch our holiday rental early that Sunday morning, take the long train across the country from Oxenholme to Euston, go straight to Wembley, watch All In, spend the night in a Travelodge, and get the train back to the Lakes after breakfast. We’d be back in the rental cottage in Windermere by lunchtime (albeit a late lunch).

The plan worked, miraculously. There were no train delays and we had a great time. But the following year we decided to commit more fully to the AEW extravaganza. No late August trip to the Lake District. Instead, our friends were coming over from Sweden to watch All In too, and we’d spend the whole weekend in London together to really embrace the vibes and enjoy the whole thing. I even went to the Dynamite and Collision tapings in Cardiff the Wednesday before. “We can do this every year”, we said as we got on the tube to Wembley. And then we all saw the signs as we left the stadium after: “AEW ALL IN LONDON. SEE YOU IN 2026.” 2026? What the fuck? Followed by: “AEW x NJPW FORBIDDEN DOOR LONDON 2025”.  Coldplay had struck. The tradition was derailed before it began. Forbidden Door would be fine, but it was no All In. 

Fuck Coldplay!

When the idea for a Forbidden Door pay-per-view first came about in June of 2022, I loved the proposal. It was the early(ish) days of AEW and the idea that, unlike WWE, they were willing to do things differently was embedded into the very fabric of this PPV. To collaborate with other promotions – that there really was a forbidden door they were not afraid to smash down – felt really exciting, and seeing the stars of AEW collide with the stars of New Japan felt like we were actually getting something never seen before on our screens. Something special. However, by 2025, despite how great the pay-per-view was (and it really was an excellent show), the specialness of Forbidden Door as a concept has long since worn off. Stars of NJPW appear regularly on AEW programming, as do the stars of CMLL and Stardom. Instead of being a door which only opens once a year at this unique event, Tony Khan has stuck a permanent foot in the Forbidden Door, keeping it ajar all year round, whenever a booking opportunity arises (much as he has failed to keep ROH distinct from AEW, propping up the AEW card with random ROH stars and matches whenever he sees fit). Furthermore, most of the big stars of New Japan we were so excited to see in 2022 and watch “dream matches” with, have since been signed full time with AEW anyway. Okada, Ospreay, Ossie Open, Jay White…they are all “All Elite” these days, not to mention the original Elite being a big NJPW draw back in the day too who, closer to their time in the promotion, it was a big deal to see reconnecting with old friends and rivals. Now though, we’ve seen it too many times. Furthermore, New Japan these days also uses many AEW wrestlers in things like its own G1 Climax or Best of the Super Juniors tournaments. The forbidden door is more like one of those wooden arches some houses have between rooms where once there used to be a door.

All that said, of course my wife and I got our tickets anyway. It is an August Bank Holiday tradition to see AEW in London that weekend after all! 

The O2 is actually a better venue to watch wrestling in than Wembley. You can see the ring from any seat in the house without obstruction and the indoors crowd vibe is much louder without all the cheers and chanting escaping out of an open roof. There’s loads of places to get food and drink before the venue doors open too, because the arena is surrounded by a massive shopping centre (I don’t recommend the TGI Fridays there though – we waited over an hour and a half for them to make us a veggie burger, and when it arrived it had sat under the hot lamps waiting to be served for such a dangerously long time, considering the mayonnaise inside, that the bun was burnt to a crisp. My mate we were with, who works in the food industry, advised us against eating it and the TGI Fridays manager agreed, giving us a full refund and apologising profusely. The line for refunds and complaints was very long as we left to find food elsewhere!) 

When the doors opened for the event proper at four pm, it was a swift ride through security (something that is a lengthy drag at Wembley usually) and we were up in our seats with a drink in our hands in time for the Zero Hour pre-show to start at four thirty. Efficient.

A testament to how good the card of Forbidden Door 2025 was, was that the pre-show matches were good enough to be an entire episode of Collision in themselves, yet I had largely forgotten them by the end of the night, despite the high quality. But it’s easy to see why: despite the brilliant technical wrestling on offer in the collection of multi-person openers, watched on by RJ City, Renee Paquette, and Jeff Jarrett up in the balcony next to us, nothing quite had the emotional hit of the first proper Forbidden Door match of the night, Adam Copeland and Christian Cage teaming together again for the first time in years, against the Patriarchy’s Kip Sabian and Killswitch (who will forever be Luchasaurus to the world, no matter what they try and call him). A great match with a lot of heart (though a shame we didn’t get the Mother Wayne versus Beth Phoenix clash my wife had hoped for and predicted). Fewer fancy moves, but more moves that mattered.

The matches that followed – Takahashi vs Fletcher and the TBS title four way – were great spectacles too, but again story trumps technicality, ironically, because the next match was probably the most technically inventive match of the whole night, but what made it work was the story: the current best technical wrestler in the world, Zack Sabre Jr, versus the former best technical wrestler in the world, Nigel McGuinness. Two British legends going head to head in the O2. It was a thing of old fashioned Saturday afternoon beauty.

The tag title match after, however, was a shame despite the story of it all. We all wanted to see Brodido win, which they did, but the Hurt Syndicate getting taken out by Ricochet and his Gates of Agony goons smacked of shitty booking – a team refusing to be pinned or some bullshit like that – which cheapened the Brodido victory. All in all, the Hurt Syndicate have been damaged by their pointless association and then disassociation with MJF and now this weak tea ending to their title reign. Their awesome entrance music is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now for an act that has lost its way when it should have been featuring at the top of the card. In retrospect, I wish I’d opted to empty my bladder and miss a few minutes of this match instead of during the earlier four-way for the TBS title which many are saying was a contender for match of the night, despite the thrown together nature of the opponents.

Okada vs Strickland, after the tag title match, was one of those matches that felt like it should have been a dream match, once upon a time, and that the bookers had forgotten both wrestlers now work for the same company. It was a solid match, but clearly served mainly as a means to write off Swerve so he could go get surgery, and to bring back Wardlow into a storyline he had no connection to, inserting him into an over large Don Callis family in which he will inevitably get lost. (Fun fact – the day before Forbidden Door we saw Don Callis walking down Regent Street, talking on his AirPods to someone and trying to hide who he was beneath a baseball cap. His voice, however, was too distinct to hide. We’ve now told ourselves the kayfabe story that he was obviously talking to Wardlow, arranging this furtive deal to join the Family, at the time).

Anyway – yeah, Wardlow’s back, and it was amazing how little I cared considering how much of a fan I was of his in his OG MJF lackey days. Jamie Hayter also made her return on the card, to a much bigger reaction, and it was a really funny and cool way to do it. Earlier, in the pre-show, Queen Aminata and Thekla had left their match brawling down the aisle and out into the backstage area. Midway through the main card of Forbidden Door they came brawling back again (like they’d been fighting non-stop around London for a hour and a half) and fought down the ramp only for Jamie Hayter to return and save the day, getting revenge on the woman who previously took her out, the “Toxic Spider”, Thekla.

I don’t really know why I’m going through results like this? You can get these online or by buying the show. I was there – so I guess I’m meant to talk about that unique perspective of what that was like to be there live. The silly chants about Christian being our dad and singing “Swerve’s House, in the middle of our street”? Or how many millions of times someone would yell “Windsaaaah!” at the top of their lungs during a lull? But actually the reason the match quality and the results are at the top of my mind here is that, unlike a big stadium event like All In at Wembley, the beauty of an arena show like this is that you can actually watch the show. You don’t just feel like a prop for TV broadcast – a body in the crowd to make the place look packed for the cameras even though, from your seat, you can’t see a damn thing. The two years I went to All In, I always felt a bit like I had to watch the show back later to really see what had happened. At Forbidden Door (and Dynamite/Collision in Cardiff last year), I didn’t need to do that. This was more like seeing a stage play, put on specifically for its theatre audience yet also screened at home. Stadium shows, on the contrary, feel like made-for-TV spectacles where the crowd is just a background actor to make things look nice for the folks at home. That said, I always miss the commentary if I watch a wrestling show live, so will no doubt buy Forbidden Door eventually just to hear what Bryan Danielson had to say as I was getting lost in the matches. Also to watch the full TBS four way!

The women’s and men’s world title matches I shall cover only briefly. They were both enjoyable and served their respective purposes. In neither did I realistically think the title was in any jeopardy but both matches did enough to make me think we might get an upset at times that was sufficient to get me to buy into the drama. And unlike some of the critics I’ve read online, I loved all the dumb over-booked shenanigans at the end of the Hangman/MJF match. Because it only really happened there in the entire card, it worked, and its classic MJF heelery.

But I gloss over those two matches because what I was really excited about seeing was my first ever cage match in person. Mad to think I’ve been watching live professional wrestling on and off since 1993 and have still never seen a cage match in person until now, but it was a great one to start with. First, the emotional entrance of Will Ospreay and that horrible idea it put in all of our heads that the man might just accidentally cripple or kill himself tonight for our entertainment. It certainly added an element of danger and nerves to the Main Event which gave it those high stakes needed to close out a show. It was also fun seeing the Young Bucks come down to their old Hanson song and continuing to be treated like jobbers by the production staff. Most importantly, it was the first time since they tried murdering Bryan Danielson that I’ve been able to personally boo the shit out of Jon Moxley and his boring Death Riders, so it was a cathartic way to end the night too.

Having a cage the size of Hell in a Cell but without the roof to stabilise it meant the Lights Out Steel Cage had some fairly ropey sides, which moved a lot when hit and didn’t always keep their shape. Despite that they managed to contain the action, and we got an enjoyable mess of carnage and violence – tables, ladders and chairs – which, unlike a chaotic Stadium Stampede, where you don’t know where to look and are constantly missing things, allowed you a full view of all the lunacy, framed by the imposing steel structure. It was great seeing Tanahashi getting his flowers with a win in London, and is always a pleasure to see Darby Allin do something stupid through a table. The match was a great way to end the night until the stupid post-match beat down of Ospreay, which frankly only left a bad taste in our mouths as we filed glumly out of the arena. Not the good kind of bad taste where we want to pay to see revenge on Moxley in the future, but the kind that went: we all knew he needed surgery anyway, he won’t be around to have a programme with the Death Riders because of this, there were eight people at ringside who could have stopped it – why not let the show just end with the victory and we all go home happy?

Other than that slightly sour ending, it was a  really entertaining show from top to (almost) bottom. I still think Coldplay fucked up a good tradition and should never be forgiven for this, and that the Forbidden Door concept is no longer fit-for purpose as a unique event, but as a stopgap replacement pay-per-view card for August Bank Holiday 2025, it was a pretty good alternative to All In, boasting the best of professional wrestling. And my wife and I had learned our lessons from the last two years. We spent another full weekend in London to enjoy the pre-show vibes with friends and spot Don Callis while out shopping, but then we left London early Monday morning and by dinner time were up here where I am writing this column now, ensconced in the Lake District, out by Lake Windermere, riding out the last week of the summer with lots of books, fresh air, long walks and beautiful views, and all without having to dash up to London for 24 hours in the middle to catch a wrestling show.

Until next time…

DaN McKee

www.everythingdanmckee.com

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