By Will Pruett, ProWrestling.net Co-Senior Staffer (@itswilltime)
Unlike artificial intelligence, I am not here to pointlessly make everything in your life more expensive. I am here to think thoughts about wrestling, ten of them…
– AEW’s announce team continues to bill Forbidden Door as a triple main event, with Maya World vs. Mercedes Moné, Swerve Strickland vs. Will Ospreay, and the 12 Man Cage Match all sharing top billing. On this show, the 12-man cage match felt more like a main event than the other two matches. I truly hope that is not the plan at Forbidden Door on Sunday. While the cage match is sure to have some insane and noteworthy moments, Swerve vs. Ospreay for the right to main event at Wembley Stadium should be presented as AEW’s biggest match so far this year. AEW got this right a year ago with Ospreay vs. Hangman Page main eventing Double or Nothing. I hope they continue to get it right on Sunday.
– Konosuke Takeshita vs. Ricochet for the AEW International Championship was the best part of this show. Takeshita is the perfect wrestler for almost every style in AEW. He can do spot-fest comedy. He can do Death Rider serious. Takeshita is somewhere between good and great at everything asked of him. Ricochet was excellent in this one as well, bringing his high-flying heel style to the mix. This match was a delight to watch, especially at the end of a Dynamite episode that was over-stuffed with eight matches and very little downtime.
– The Mark Briscoe promo and Finisher Festival (TM) that followed Takeshita vs. Ricochet was really exciting and well done. AEW had to sell the idea of crazy action in the cage match coming on Sunday, and this segment did just that. Briscoe continues to deliver on the mic in the main event mix – and his team fighting for the power of friendship instead of the power of money for Don Callis is a compelling hook for Sunday. There are a lot of obvious setups happening for Sunday’s cage match, but they’re compelling and should lead to a fun slate of matches for MJF leading into AEW Redemption.
– Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kenny Omega was well built on this show, with The Elite (and Jack Perry’s) other matches (I still cannot define Jack Perry as fully Elite). Perry vs. ZSJ gave us a clear example of a ZSJ match and a bit of what to expect from Omega’s match with him on Sunday. The Young Bucks vs. Bad Dude Tito and Mikey Nicholls was basically a squash match for The Bucks. The follow-up of giving us a bit of mic work between ZSJ and Omega worked, especially when it came to Omega dropping the reference to AEW Redemption.
– Swerve Strickland vs. Daniel Garcia was not the match Swerve needed going into Forbidden Door. It’s already a struggle to create a story for Swerve winning at that show with Ospreay discussing his boyhood dream of scoring a winning goal in Wembley. Swerve needed to look like the “most dangerous” wrestler he bills himself as, and could have used a flash win against someone like Garcia. AEW likes to pick weird spots to have decent matches, and this was one of them. The story needed Swerve to squash Garcia, but the match was a competitive 12 minutes. This did a disservice to Ospreay, Swerve, and the story of the Owen Hart Tournament finals.
– Will Ospreay vs. El Phantasmo was a less upsetting match than Swerve vs. Garcia. The announce team did a nice job painting this match as part of a long-term clash between these two, and the match did not feel as out of place as Garcia vs. Strickland. I would still like to see matches like this feature a little more “new Will Ospreay” submission style wins to reinforce the journey his character has been on over the last six months. Why spend all that time investing in a new and improved Ospreay when he’s still going to win with the Hidden Blade? (Fun Fact Bonus Thought – I was at the August 2019 Ospreay vs. ELP match in Long Beach that ELP shockingly won. The show was mid.)
– While the video package between Mercedes Moné and Maya World was well done, I wanted more from these two heading into Forbidden Door. I understand there is a match between these women with their tag partners on Collision, but Dynamite could have used a verbal confrontation beyond just the video package. With Mercedes acting more like a heel last week and this week, this is a puzzling outcome to predict.
– The two Survival of the Fittest qualifying matches on this show (Two women’s matches on a Dynamite? Is this Christmas?) were alright. I question having Marina Shafir lose to Harley Cameron and not finding a way to put her in the Survival of the Fittest match. Were she in that match, she would be a plausible winner. At this moment, it does not seem like Queen Aminata or Harley Cameron are cut out to win that match, but they could both tell stories within it. Also, does Jamie Hayter just not want the TBS Championship? Why has she been held out of these matches?
– Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta vs. Mistico, Bandido, and Brody King was an alright opener for this show, but it did little to make me want to see Moxley vs. Bandido at Forbidden Door. Moxley is great at this character and making people care when he talks about a match. Moxley discussing the challenge of facing Bandido would have been more compelling than a lot of this match was.
– There have to be DCMJF shirts available at the merch stand this Sunday, right? AEW can’t be this inept at merchandising that they would miss out on a sweet homoerotic t-shirt to close out Pride Month.
I’ll be at both Forbidden Door this Sunday and next week’s episode of AEW Dynamite, so get excited for some in-person thoughts instead of your standard diet of TV thoughts! And if you’re around those shows and see an awkward man with a camera, say hi!
Will Pruett writes about wrestling and popular culture at prowrestling.net. To see his video content, subscribe to his YouTube channel. To contact, check him out on Bluesky @itswilltime, leave a comment, or email him at itswilltime@gmail.com.
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