AEW & NJPW FORBIDDEN DOOR

United Center, Chicago

HIROOKI GOTO & YASHI-HASHI vs. AARON SOLO & QT MARSHALL (8:55): What a fucking show. AEW really delivers the kitchen sink with their PPV's. 4 pre-show matches, 9 main card matches. Big debuts (Cesaro!). Shocking appearances (Shibata!). The pre-show was 1 hour, the main card went 3 hours and 45 minutes. So, yeah, it was a bit too long, but the first handful of matches on the main card had me thinking: is this going to be the greatest PPV of all time? The rowdy, raucous, deafening Chicago crowd certainly helped. And this was all for a show that didn't even have a dream matches. Omega was injured so we unfortunately didn't get to see an Omega/Ibushi match or an Okada/Omega match. Ibushi is out with an injury and feuding backstage with management so he was out. CM Punk and Bryan Danielson are injured. Hiromu Takahashi had a fever so he couldn't get on the plane. Ishii is injured so he was out. Jesus Christ, is there anyone left? There were a few names left off the card like Evil and Yano that, really, weren't missed. You could tell how great a crowd this was as Goto and Yashi-Hashi got roars of approval like they were Hulk Hogan. None of the pre-show matches were all that great but the crowd made them awesome. **1/2

LANCE ARCHER vs. NICK COMOROTO (6:10): Archer is the lone AEW star in the G1 this year. That might not last long, as he did a cannonball entering the ring and landed right on his head. Yikes. This was just too big guys doling it out. It was okay. *1/2

KEITH LEE & SWERVE STRICKLAND vs. EL DESPERADO & YOSHINOBU KANEMARU (12:05): I'm not sold on Swerve Strickland yet. He has to have a really great singles match for me to see how great he is. The crowd adore Keith Lee, though. This was fun. **1/2

THE GUNN CLUB & MAX CASTER vs. YUYA UEMURA, ALEX COUGHLIN, THE DKC & KEVIN KNIGHT (5:35): Billy Gunn's sons left the ring to chase after Danhausen so they weren't even in this match. Billy Gunn got some big pops. It's so funny seeing how taller he is than everyone else when in the WWE you never noticed it. The opening rap that Caster does with the Gunn Club saying the wrong city they're in is always hilarious. I think putting The Acclaimed and The Gunn Club together was actually a great move. The crowd loved this. **1/2

MINORU SUZUKI, CHRIS JERICHO & SAMMY GUEVERA vs. EDDIE KINGSTON, SHOTA UMINO & WHEELER YUTA (19:00): This was a fantastic match. You couldn't get a better crowd. My God did they make these matches ten times better than they were. The one thing they did that I liked was they really pushed some of the new New Japan guys like Shota Umino. He became a fucking star because of this match. Umino is Red Shoe's son and they showed clips of Jericho putting him in The Walls of Jericho in Japan during a match. Later on during this show, Jericho threw a fireball into Umino's face backstage. This was just all action and was super entertaining. ***1/2

FTR vs. JEFF COBB & THE GREAT O'KHAN vs. ROPPONGI VICE (16:25): One member of FTR did the injury gimmick and came back out later taped up to get the crowd to pop. FTR ended up winning the IWGP tag titles here, which means they hold those, the AAA titles, and the ROH titles. I'm guessing they're going to do a 4 title unification match with the Bucks down the line. This had a lot of good action but, man, The Great O'Khan is so terrible it's not even funny. FTR is super over, though, so them winning was great. ***

PAC vs. CLARK CONNORS vs. MIRO vs. MALAKAI BLACK (15:05): Another great match. This string of good to great matches early on was really impeccable. Ishii beat Connors to be in this match but Ishii got injured so they put Connors in anyway. They really pushed him which helped. The ending to this match was genius, really. Malaki Black had Connors in a submission and they were crawling around and PAC got up on the top rope and did a 450 or whatever it's called to break it up. PAC won the new All Atlantic title, which is kind of superfluous since every title can be held by someone from any country. Everyone looked good in this match. ***1/2

DARBY ALLIN, STING & SHINGO TAKAGI vs. EL PHANTASMO & THE YOUNG BUCKS (13:00): This was a lot of fun but more a comedy, entertainment match than any kind of high drama thing. Sting started the match appearing above the entranceway and jumped down onto everyone. ELP and The Bucks did the stupid comedy back scratch spot which got a huge pop. This, like the 3 previous matches, had so many people doing dives and flips and moves non-stop that it was just super engaging. ELP did a top rope walk into a moonsault to the floor which was great. Hiromu was supposed to be in this match but was sick. Sure, it'd have been great if he was in it, but this match didn't suffer at all without him. This was a total blast. ***1/2

THUNDER ROSA vs. TONI STORM (10:40): New Japan doesn't have women's wrestlers so I guess they figured they needed women on this show so they put this title match on. Stardom is owned by the same company as New Japan but Stardom had a PPV on the same day, hence why Thunder Rosa wasn't defending against Karai Sane or someone. This was pretty mediocre to be honest. The AEW women's division has never been that good for one reason or another. *1/2

WILL OSPREAY vs. ORANGE CASSIDY (16:45): This was the match of the night. Considering Will Ospreay is the best wrestler in the world, of course it was. Cassidy started with comedy bits but by the end they were trading big moves and excellent near-falls. Ospreay is the king of the near-fall, always kicking out at the last possible millisecond. Ospreay retained the U.S. title. After the match, Ospreay and Aussie Open started to beat up Cassidy so Shibata came out and beat up Ospreay. Are they really going to do it? Let Shibata have a real match again? They keep toying with it, giving us a grappling match against Zack Sabre, Jr. and having him do some bumps and wrestle a bit here. He looked great. Ospreay vs. Shibata at the Dome would be epic. ***1/2

CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI vs. ZACK SABRE, JR. (18:30): Bryan Danielson was supposed to be in this match but was injured so they had a surprise to replace him. It turned out to be Cesaro, using his old ROH name. The crowd of course went ape shit for him. The problem was we got a too long, Zack Sabre, Jr. match. I thought most of the match was boring. Great intro for Claudio, though. **

JAY WHITE vs. 'HANGMAN' ADAM PAGE vs. ADAM COLE vs. KAZUCHIKA OKADA (21:00): This was really good but the end was very anticlimactic. Cole got pinned by Jay White after White gave Okada a Blade Runner. Why he didn't pin Okada but went over to pin Cole is probably because Okada is too big a deal to be pinned. Cole looked like he got knocked out or had a concussion or something so maybe the ref called an audible and just ended the match shorter than planned. The one problem with this match was no one thought they'd give the IWGP title to Cole or Page. I could've seen Okada winning it, though, but they went with the boring choice and let Jay retain. Jay White was the weak link in this. While everything he does looks polished...he wrestles too methodically and slow and he's only in great matches once in a blue moon. Page and Cole looked great and Okada looked kind of slow but he is getting older. ***

JON MOXLEY vs. HIROSHI TANAHASHI (18:20): CM Punk was supposed to defend his title in this match but he got injured. Moxley ended up winning the interim AEW championship here. This match was actually better than I expected, although not a classic main event or anything. I always bash Tanahashi these days because he's old and slow and not as great but to his credit he did everything you'd want to see and hung in there for 18 minutes never looking tired or anything. Moxley wanted to bleed because he loves hardcore stuff so he bled like a stuck pig. The problem? He wasn't even hit in the head with anything. One moment he was just at ringside bleeding all over the place for no reason. After the match they did the Blood and Guts angle where Jericho's team ran out and Claudio and Wheeler Yuta and Eddie Kingston ran out and everyone brawled. I didn't really need to see more after a 5 hour show and the main event over but I guess they needed to push Wednesday's show. All in all this turned out to be a very entertaining, often great PPV. Considering it came about on short notice and most of the big names were injured, this was a total winner. ***