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When AEW announced Forbidden Door – the show, not the concept – in 2022, it marked a truly revolutionary concept in the world of American televised professional wrestling.
Suddenly two of the titans of professional wrestling were coming together for a greatest hits show a la the cards Ring of Honor used to run before shuttering their doors at the end of 2021, and a slew of interesting matches and angles suddenly opened up for both promotions to showcase in “AEWland,” Chicago, Illinois.
For Tony Khan, Forbidden Door I was all about doing something new, but now, with a year to further expand his relationships with his counterparts in NJPW, the “All Elite” CEO feels much more comfortable in the collaboration process, as he explained in the official pre-Forbidden Door media call.
“The rapport that’s been built, I already had a really good connection with Rocky, but Gedo and I were getting to know each other better last year, and now I feel really close to Gedo, we’re friends, and have a great relationship,” Khan said via Fightful. “He was in the office with me and working [at AEW Dynamite]. It was great to have him there. I really like Gedo and respect him. On the business side, I’ve built a stronger connection with Ohbari-san [NJPW President Takami Ohbari]. He’s done a great job with the New Japan Pro-Wrestling office and the business side. I love working with both of them.”
Turning his attention to the challenges of the 2022 edition of Forbidden Door, Khan noted just how many injuries he had to deal with last summer and how having a relatively clean injury report has been the biggest difference between last year's show and this one.
“This year, thankfully, knock on wood, we are not as injury bitten as we were last year at this time,” Khan noted. “Last year was the most challenging run of injuries that I’ve ever been through in any sport. This is my 12th year in the NFL, I’ve spent seven years as the director of Football with Fulham and now with AEW for four years, never have I seen anything like what happened last year between Double or Nothing and Forbidden Door in terms of huge stars getting injury in all different kind of ways. The injury bug truly hit us hard.”
Though AEW isn't without injury heading into Forbidden Door II, as Bryan Danielson is reportedly working injured, and PAC hasn't been on television since January due to a broken nose, with MJF, Kenny Omega, CM Punk, and… Jungle Boy (?) all locked into top-of-the-card matchups, it's clear TK got much more of the matches he wanted on the card, especially with Tetsuya Naito officially confirmed for the show.
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Tony Khan is open to working with STARDOM on future Forbidden Door shows.
Turning his attention from what's confirmed for Forbidden Door and what didn't ultimately make the cut, Tony Khan was asked why STARDOM didn't have a representative on the show. While Khan acknowledged that STARDOM didn't make the card this year, as they, too, had a show booked for the same night, he would love to see Stardom performers on shows moving forward.
“When we lined up the event, I learned that Stardom had scheduled an event the same day as Forbidden Door so a lot of their talent would not be available. It’s sometimes an issue, in the promotion of this event, that there are other events happening in Japan at the same time. I can only imagine how challenging that is because we have our TV over here. Certainly, when our wrestlers have had to go to Japan, we miss them and that can be hard. For example, Wheeler Yuta in the Super Juniors last year and Eddie Kingston is in the G1 this year. It can be challenging at times when you lose wrestlers for an extended period of time. We’ve sent Willow to participate in New Japan shows, but most of the stuff Willow has done with New Japan as been in America, so it hasn’t been detrimental to her ability to appear on AEW TV, which is great. She’s a great star for us and rising star who has been involved in a lot of shows recently,” Khan said via Fightful.
“With STARDOM having their own event scheduled the same day as Forbidden Door, they found it very challenging to have participation in the show, and I completely understand that as a promoter. In the future, I would like to work with STARDOM more, and hopefully, if the logistics and the scheduling work out, there are more things we can do. Through our shared friends and partners at New Japan Pro-Wrestling, I do understand there is interest from STARDOM in working together. The key is finding dates when we’re not doing shows at the same time when the talent can crossover and work together more. It’s definitely something we did talk about and are very open to in the future.”
Had Mercedes Moné not suffered a leg injury at NJPW Strong Resurgence, maybe “The CEO” would have served as a duel representative for both NJPW/STARDOM at Forbidden Door II. Still, it's nice to see the woman who defeated her on that show, Willow Nightengale, landing on the Forbidden Door card, especially is someone like Kairi comes out to challenge the winner for Toni Storm's AEW Women's World Championship at the end of the show.
