AEWxNJPW Forbidden Door has been rife with card changes, but now it seems that all but one match involved a change in participants for one reason or another.
The current card for the much-anticipated Forbidden Door pay-per-view between AEW and NJPW has ticked many boxes for fans of the kingpin of Japanese wrestling. Barring the obvious major omissions – Tetsuya Naito, KENTA, et al – the promotion is represented tremendously well, all things considered.
However, the Wrestling Observer’s Bryan Alvarez has analysed the card, coming to the conclusion that all but one match – Thunder Rosa and Toni Storm’s Women’s World Championship clash – was changed in some way.
The latest Bryan & Vinny Show saw Alvarez run through the various changes to the Forbidden Door card, including the obvious changes to the AEW World and All Atlantic Championship contests, respectively. The latter has only just undergone a change, as Tomohiro Ishii has been ruled out on medical grounds, and replaced by Clark Connors.
Tomohiro Ishii was injured in his AEW #AllAtlantic Title NJPW Eliminator Tournament match with @ClarkConnors. With Ishii not medically cleared, he forfeits & Connors will now go to #ForbiddenDoor on Sunday to face #Miro, #PAC & @malakaiblxck to crown the 1st All-Atlantic Champion pic.twitter.com/IhI9inTnOv
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) June 23, 2022
Most notably, the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship match between Jay White, Kazuchika Okada, Adam Page, and Adam Cole was reportedly originally due to be a tag team match. One of the scheduled participants in that was then moved – allegedly, this was Orange Cassidy – culminating in the resultant IWGP title four-way.
Cassidy is facing Will Ospreay for the IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship. However, he was reportedly penned to defend against Andrade El Idolo. Andrade won’t feature on Forbidden Door at all, having been banned due to political issues between Mexican promotions CMLL – NJPW’s Mexican partner – and AAA, who Andrade wrestles for.
Zack Sabre Jr. was due to wrestle Bryan Danielson in a dream encounter as well, although this wasn’t outright confirmed by AEW. With Danielson out injured, ZSJ is now facing the unknown at Forbidden Door, with Alvarez heavily believing this to be the debuting Claudio Castagnoli.
The various multi-man matches reportedly also underwent some minor changes, too. Jon Moxley was seemingly planned to be on Eddie Kingston’s team before he was moved. Bryan also hinted that both the Bullet Club-fronted tag team match, and AEW and IWGP Tag Team Championships match were both changed, though didn’t specify how, exactly.
As for the Buy-In, the assumption is that Anthony Bowens was perhaps scheduled to wrestle but owing to his injury, the 58-year-old Billy Gunn will instead wrestle alongside his sons Austin and Colten, and Bowens’ partner Max Caster.