By Will Pruett, ProWrestling.net Co-Senior Staffer (@itswilltime)
I was at AEW Forbidden Door and the AEW Forbidden Door post-show scrum last night! Here are 10 in-person thoughts from the show! Stay tuned to my various social channels for photos from this one.
– AEW and Tony Khan made the correct decision last night, leaving Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland to be the true main event of this show. Ospreay and Strickland had an insane and beautiful bloody match. The artfulness of their effort, combined with the sheer brutality of it, left us with a really impactful spectacle. Ospreay winning both this match and his dream of main eventing Wembley Stadium was a true moment for this promotion and the career of Ospreay. AEW has not told the “boyhood dream” style story often. They are a promotion that creatively veers into grey areas and complicated stories of redemption. The question now becomes who Ospreay faces at Wembley (that is probably a whole other blog I should blog).
– Swerve Strickland’s 2026 heel return and run seem to have been leading to this moment. He was the primary antagonist for Ospreay in this match and was the man standing in the way of Ospreay’s dream. After the match, Swerve and Ospreay shared a long moment in the corner of the ring. I have to wonder if this serves as the season finale for this version of heel Swerve. This character has never truly caught on with me. His focus on “power” and the weird diversion into wanting to be an EVP never clicked from a straight-up wrestling standpoint. Fans still like to cheer Swerve. Will he transition into a more natural babyface role? Does doing so move Swerve too far down the card?
– Jon Moxley vs. Bandido was interesting when you consider heel and babyface placement in AEW at this present moment. Moxley played a total heel in this match, trying to steal Bandido’s mask and brutalizing him. Moxley then made an attempt at redemption (not the pay-per-view) with a handshake for Bandido in the post-match. Were these heel-ish actions just to make the story of Mox and Bandido more compelling, or were they a hint that Moxley is still who he was when he tried to suffocate Bryan Danielson? When will we see this version of Jon Moxley truly come to the surface? Will it be when Will Ospreay finally achieves his dream and Moxley believes him to be weak enough to pick off?
– All the credit in the world must be given to Mercedes Moné and Maya World. What a match in the finals of the Owen Hart Tournament – a tournament neither woman was originally scheduled to be in. This was another match for Mercedes that proves her to be the best big-match performer in the game today. For Maya World, this was a coming-out party of what she can truly be in the ring. She clicked as a character for the fans in the arena last night and had everyone hanging on each near fall. It was remarkable to see. Mercedes and Maya also handled the adverse circumstances of Maya’s gear breaking early in the match really well. Mercedes in particular deserves credit for her ability to cover some time and keep the crowd engaged while Aubrey Edwards and Maya World worked on getting Maya’s gear ready for the stretch run of this match.
– Thekla vs. Starlight Kid for the AEW Women’s World Championship was excellent. This was Thekla, for the first time in AEW, truly coming into her own. Her comfort as a character and as a wrestler was remarkable to see. Starlight Kid was an energetic and natural babyface for Thekla, proving that wrestling does not have to be super complicated. I hope that we get this version of Thekla, both in the ring and as a character telling stories, more often going into All In. This version of Thekla is ready to stand with the best of AEW’s women’s division.
– Team Mark Briscoe vs. Team DC-MJF was another in the long line of chaotic spotfest matches featured in AEW that are less about the moves and stunts and more about the power of friendship to lift a person up. This may sound insane, but the downfall of MJF here was his lack of actual friends who care about him, not his wrestling. Mark Briscoe chose a team he could trust that wanted him to excel. AEW comes back to this theme often. It is a promotion built originally on the friendships featured in Being The Elite, and this theme is the most consistent one throughout the seven-year history of the promotion. AEW – Where the friends wrestle.
– The Young Bucks produced an amazing and dynamic opening match in the state of California. This is what they do best as a tag team. The action between The Bucks, Shingo and Titan, and Mistico and Mascara Dorada was absolutely insane from the beginning and brought the crowd fully to life. With AEW running San Diego this coming week, I must earnestly plead for Tony Khan to book El Sky Team vs. The Young Bucks in a straight-up tag match.
– Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr. was one of my favorite efforts from the new version of Kenny Omega. These two seem like a stylistic mismatch when you first contemplate them together, but they have yet to have an actual bad match. ZSJ’s more deliberate pacing really stands out in a promotion like AEW that appreciates wrestling but often veers towards the fast-paced action. Omega looked ready, not to be the old Kenny here, but to be a new version that meshes new Kenny’s storytelling and battle against exhaustion within himself with old Kenny’s timing (but not pacing). This version of Kenny could be perfect for Ospreay at All In.
– I may never forgive Hiroshi Tanahashi, the most beautiful man that may ever exist, for cutting his hair. I hope retirement is bringing him a ton of joy. When “Go Ace” hit in person, my heart still leapt.
– Adam Copeland and Christian Cage had a nice shenanigans-filled match against David Finlay and Clark Connors. The Dogs performed really well in their biggest spot in AEW yet. I like this group more without Gabe Kidd than with him. The long-awaited return of Switchblade Jay White was a nice bonus in this match and made weeks of really bad vignettes with The Bang Bang Gang make a little bit more sense. With Copeland and Christian looking for more tag teams to face, I do hope we end up with Juice Robinson and Switchblade vs. Cage and Copeland one of these weeks. Switchblade has looked his best in AEW when teaming with Juice, and that match would be pretty fun.
I am exhausted and have over 10,000 raw photos to cull through to find some fun ones to edit! Thanks for reading! I’ll be back with more in-person AEW thoughts later this week!
Will Pruett writes about wrestling and popular culture at prowrestling.net. To see his video content, subscribe to his YouTube channel. To contact Will, check him out on Bluesky @itswilltime, leave a comment, or email him at itswilltime@gmail.com.