It is very nearly time for AEW’s yearly crossover event to once more take center stage, because the promotion teams with NJPW, CMLL, and STARDOM to present Forbidden Door! As of this writing there are nine matches on the foremost card and one on the pre-show, with five total championships on the road. The winners of each the lads’s and ladies’s Owen Hart Cup tournaments can even be decided, while Mark Briscoe’s pursuit of MJF’s AEW World Championship is at stake in a 12-man steel cage match.
But which Forbidden Door matches have the Wrestling Inc. staff puffed up to buy the show, and which make us feel kind of the alternative of that? That is the query this column goals to search out out. Listed here are WINC’s biggest draws and largest duds for AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026!
Draw: Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
Kenny Omega and Zack Sabre Jr. will lock horns for the primary time in eight years at Forbidden Door. Only once of their shared time in NJPW did they share the ring, with Omega picking up the win after quarter-hour during a 2018 G1 Climax block bout. And that is about as near a conventional Forbidden Door style match that may be staged on this time frame.
It’s yr five of the Forbidden Door event, and in those five years, outside talent have been appearing as and once they can be found. So there’s not far more runway to the concept whilst it continues to survive.
Omega and ZSJ seems like a requiem to the Forbidden Door idea of old, the last true NJPW vs. AEW match that carries any type of what might be regarded as nostalgia for that point. Each wrestlers are the perfect at the actual style they adopted and accentuated. Each are top names for his or her respective corporations.
Never mind the undeniable fact that each time Kenny Omega is on the cardboard it ought to be considered a draw. The very undeniable fact that that is what Forbidden Door was designed to do, pitting one company’s best against the opposite, just makes this match feel right on an event like this.
Written by Max Everett
Dud: Adam Copeland & Christian Cage vs. The Dogs
Adam Copeland and Christian Cage returned to the land of Tag Team Champions by dethroning FTR in an I Quit match at Double or Nothing, beating their rivals to say gold and make sure that they may proceed to be the tag team throwback they’re for a bit of longer.
Step one on that road of little longer got here with one other throwback, Cope going out of his method to buy up a bunch of disposable cameras specifically in order that they could resurrect the five-second pose. The pose didn’t even get that far, nevertheless, because the Dogs told the world what they were doin’ – and it involved chasing the Tag Team Champions and their shiny belts, no less.
David Finlay and Clark Connors attacked Cope and Cage, happening to do their very own poses within the time between that attack and the eventual return of the champions. The champions returned, attacked the Dogs because that’s what wrestling calls for, after which made the challenge. And that is all she wrote. That’s the idea for this match.
Though it is not exactly a world title match with all the various bells and whistles, neither is it a Forbidden Door match (anymore), it’s a primary time match. The Dogs are definitely a team that would realistically hold the titles. And so they were a NJPW team once upon a time. But they are not realistically a team that would dethrone Cope and Christian on their first defense, and so they’ve been with AEW for long enough for this to not feel like a bout worthy of the event.
Overall, that is just an underwhelming inclusion on what is certain to be an indulgent enough wrestling card. Such is the problem if you put titles on legends with limitations on what they will actually do within the ring.
Written by Max Everett
Draw: Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland
It is vital to notice that I’m writing this after the June 17 episode of “AEW Dynamite.” Not due to undeniable fact that we now have WAY TOO MUCH details about what Will Ospreay and Alex Windsor got as much as on their wedding night, but due to undeniable fact that face-to-face segment between Ospreay and Swerve Strickland swung their upcoming match into the draw column for me personally.
Originally, the concept of getting Ospreay and Strickland face one another at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 seemed a bit of uninspired. The 2 men headlined the Forbidden Door pay-per-view in a really fun match that they then tried to copy a yr in a while the 2025 Summer Blockbuster edition of “Dynamite,” leading to a 30-minute draw. So when the brackets for this yr’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament got here out and each Ospreay and Strickland weren’t only within the tournament but on opposite sides of the bracket, it’s as if AEW screamed “WE ARE DOING OSPREAY/STRICKLAND PART THREE GUYS!!” in our faces, taking a number of the unpredictability out of the competition.
Nonetheless, the tournament has now happened and the 2 men have had their face-to-face to get people excited, and the concept of Ospreay vs. Strickland for a 3rd summer running has turned from a formality to something I’m genuinely enthusiastic about. The winner of the match gets the AEW World Championship match at AEW All In London on August 30, which implies that this bout will probably be the official start of the road to Wembley Stadium.
Everyone seems to be obviously expecting Ospreay to win because he hasn’t headlined AEW’s biggest show of the yr in his home country yet. With that said, Strickland’s recent heel persona has worked wonders for him in recent months — a far more dangerous, calculating version of himself that provides this match something it did not have in 2024 or 2025: a face/heel dynamic. The previous two matches were babyface exhibitions to sit down back and luxuriate in, but now we’ve a situation where AEW is actively urging you to cheer for Ospreay, which is able to make his victory (if he gets it that’s) all of the more rewarding.
There’s the added layer of intrigue with the Death Riders, but to be honest, I hope they do not become involved because that can aid the story they have been telling. Bringing Ospreay as much as a regular where nobody in AEW can beat him, they do not need to point out their faces on this one. The long road to Wembley begins in San Jose; the query is will or not it’s Ospreay bringing it home, or will Wembley once more be Swerve’s House?
Written by Sam Palmer
Dud: Team MJF vs. Team Briscoe
The teams have been chosen. Mark Briscoe has his guys. MJF has his guys. The foremost event of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 is about in stone…and it’s positive. Nothing more, nothing less. Just positive. I’m unsure if I’m within the minority on the subject of Team Briscoe vs. Team MJF inside a steel cage, but for nearly as good as this match will likely be given AEW’s track record with violence, chaos, and “plunderfests,” I simply cannot get behind this match in any respect.
The foremost reason is easy. Forbidden Door is an interpromotional pay-per-view featuring AEW, Latest Japan Pro Wrestling, CMLL, and STARDOM. Of the 12 men involved within the foremost event, all 12 of them are AEW contracted wrestlers. To the entire individuals who will answer back saying “Konosuke Takeshita is technically an AEW and NJPW guy because he’s under a dual contract,” or “Andrade El Idolo has been at quite a few NJPW’s foremost shows this yr,” please just stop. Andrade is an AEW guy and so is Takeshita, and besides, Takeshita has a 3rd contract with DDT and you do not see that company’s logo on the poster do you?
This can be a match that embodies the state of the Forbidden Door concept. It’s an AEW show with a smattering of international talent sprinkled throughout to appease the fans of those promotions, which in point of fact is largely every AEW show when you concentrate on it long enough. I do respect the undeniable fact that Tony Khan is not shoehorning NJPW or CMLL guys right into a match they don’t have any business being an element of for the sake of an idea, but when your show is built around an idea of seeing wrestlers from 4 different corporations going at it, you find yourself pleasing almost no person.
On the foremost crux of the story itself, as much as I like seeing Mark Briscoe getting this type of shine, it’s almost pointless considering you are not going to have him win the AEW World Championship from MJF anyway. If anything, there’s more intrigue in what might occur at AEW Redemption 2026 because at the least there you may have a probability of Kenny Omega getting himself back within the title picture one month out from AEW All In London 2026. Briscoe is great, and his team will likely win, but unlike the Darby Allin title reign that was designed around a particular story, slotting Briscoe on this spot just sort of seems like AEW is killing time before Wembley Stadium. It can be fun, however it’s all only a bit unnecessary.
Written by Sam Palmer