Tony Khan and AEW are in full-throttle hyping up the upcoming collaborative Pay-Per-View Forbidden Door, even despite an absolute ton of speed bumps along the way.

Between an absolute truckload of injuries both new – see Tomohiro Ishii bowing out of the All-Atlantic Championship four-way – and old – see Kenny Omega, who made it clear he is still not clear to go – as well as backstage politics keeping wrestlers like Andrade and Rey Fenix on the sidelines, it sometimes feels like the show itself is barely hanging on and that another disaster to the card can happen at any moment.

Well, now there’s another thing that can be officially added to the list of hurdles Forbidden Door has had to experience: Scheduling conflicts.

In Tony Khan’s media call for the event, he revealed that former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada was only available for appearances this week leading up to Forbidden Door, with current IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Jay White only available a couple weeks before the event.

Okada and White are both in the four-way co-main event of Forbidden Door, in a match with “Hangman” Adam Page and Adam Cole for the Heavyweight Title, and although Khan clearly wanted these two New Japan stars to be on TV more leading up to the event, he had to work around the conflicts.

Okada’s late arrival caused some confusion in the build-up to Forbidden Door, as Adam Cole proclaimed in kayfabe that “The Rainmaker” would not be arriving in Chicago for the show, with Jay White teasing a mystery opponent for his belt after taking it from Okada that is neither Cole nor Page – before Okada finally arrived on the most recent episode of Dynamite and all four were booked for the match anyway.

Ultimately, it is a testament to the incredible talent between these two rosters that Forbidden Door still looks to be a very fun and memorable Pay-Per-View despite all these issues. Even if Okada and White did not get as much TV time as desired, the way they were presented in the TV time they did have did a good enough job at making them come across as stars.