Haven't seen a main eventer in NJPW tap out since idk when. Maybe never. Solid match and win for Bryan

I’m too faded right now to post my full thoughts, but that ending was definitely a shocker. Omega/Ospreay and Elite/BCC matches were the best.

Jungle Boy turn wtf

I skipped out on the Elite/BCC 10-man and the women's match.

Omega/Will was one of the best matches I've seen in the past 5 years.

First time posting in a while, though I don't know much about NJPW I was very excited for this card and had high expectations. I feel fine about the event as a whole, think I was probably slightly underwhelmed in general.

The Good:
Holy **** Omega/Ospreay was insane. First time watching the guy, he is awesome. What a war. I only saw the clips of their first match from the promo video, but I'm rushing to go watch that asap.

The Bad:
Wtf the Jungle Boy heel turn was atrocious. He gives ONE single blindside lariat to Hook and that just lays him out cold and hes on the ground for multiple minutes as JB walks off. Not only does that make Hook look pathetically weak (he's only been booked as a super strong badass tough guy), it just made the whole thing fall flat for me. Not every turn needs to be this vicious savage bloody beating, but you need to do more than that. Hook sold it like he took an unprotected chair shot to the head.

The Ugly:
Yikes, the Sting trio match was rough. Multiple botches, most damning was Sting failing to get off the table for a Sammy Guevara 630, and taking the bump. Then seconds later Sting is back in the ring having no sold the bump because he wasn't supposed to take it, and Guevara who landed the move was dead on the outside for the rest of the match. It totally threw off the finish. They need to protect Sting more, he can't be trusted in spots like that.

Agree with this. I liked Forbidden Door 2022 quite a bit more.

Omega/Ospreay was incredible. 10 man tag was better than I thought it would be.

Everything else was either meh or disappointing (To be fair, expectations were very very high).

****ing wild that Omega/Ospreay have both the #1 and #2 matches of the year, with possibly a third coming at All In.

Omega/Ospreay was unreal good, probably my favorite match in quite a while.

Wasn't really digging Danielson/Okada given the hype, but it would've been nice to see how it'd play out if not for the Danielson arm break. I think the crowd was pretty dead b/c Omega/Ospreay was so epic.

Orange Cassidy match and 10-man were also solid, but too many matches that were guaranteed stinkers (women's title, JAS, Jungle Boy).

Kinda odd that Jay White won a high profile match at last Forbidden Door, then is not even on this card. I don't think his booking since joining AEW could be much worse than it's been.

Tanahashi just looked really old these past 2 nights

Liked the first half of Dynamite tonight. Second half was pretty rough.

Mox/Ishii was great, as was the 6-man.

Jack Perry's debut as a heel was not good. Sting and Jericho should not be main eventing anything in 2023.

Jungleboy's stuff wasn't good but hopefully we get more and he gets better. It seems to really go against who he seems to be which is a shyish nice guy. He did have at least one good promo vs. Christian months ago so he's not incapable of it.

Hope Bryan's heeled enough to be in Blood and Guts.

Show really suffers from keeping Dynamite and Collision mostly apart. Put FTR, Punk, Miro, HOB, and some others on Dynamite instead of Dark Order, the weekly "I guess we need women on the show" segment, and 2.0.

I don't think this is an injury that would take only 4 weeks to heal.

Yikes. Def a bad break there

Actually that’s a good break, pretty clean. 6 weeks is definitely a possibility.

Danielson confirmed a psycho for wrestling 10+ minutes with that. Then he also did all the post-show stuff with a smile on his face.

Meltzer ratings for Forbidden Door:

Best Friends, Desperado & Rocky vs. Mogul Embassy: 3.25
Athena vs. Starkz: 2.25
Grayson vs. Phantasmo: 3.25
BUSHI, Hiromu & Takagi vs. Cobb, Fletcher & TJP: 3.5
MJF vs. Tanahashi: 3.25
Kojima vs. Punk: 4
Cassidy vs. Garcia vs. Sabre vs. Shibata: 4
Perry vs. SANADA: 3.75
Castagnoli, Moxley, Takeshita, Umino & Yuta vs. Ishii, Kingston, Page & Young Bucks: 4.75
Storm vs. Nightingale: 3.25
Omega vs. Ospreay: 6
Allin, Naito & Sting vs. Guevara, Jericho & Suzuki: 3
Danielson vs. Okada: 4.75

If you subtracted a full star from every single match, you'd have something resembling how I felt.

I'm actually really surprised he gave Omega/Ospreay only 6*. Danielson/Okada maybe 4* but(!!!!) if it's out of 6, I guess 4.75 would be fine.

They're just clicking buttons now. Takeshita and Jungle Boy are 2 guys who make 0 sense as heels.

I guess with Takeshita, they'll have him turn on Callis at some point and the fans will love him, but then when he's at his hottest, AEW will inexplicably pull him off TV for 3-6 months.

Maybe it’s cuz I haven’t paid attention to Meltzer in forever and a day but now he’s giving out 6 stars?

Anyway, marked out bigly to the final countdown. Also that match ruled

Yes. He even gave 7 to one of the Okada/Omega matches. It's stupid.

It's like, most people's match ratings system only goes to five. But what if a match is all the way at five, and they do something that pushes it just a bit over the top? That's right. You go to six. It's one better, isn't it?

MJF/Adam Cole stuff was all hilarious this week

Some awesome matches coming up in AEW:

Saturday Battle of the Belts - these are usually complete garbage shows, but this one is intriguing b/c Orange Cassidy v. Lance Archer is actually a legit match.

Saturday Collission - could be an epic show. FTR v. Bullet Club best 2/3 falls is a guaranteed banger and Starks v. CM Punk for the Owen Title.

Wednesday Dynamite - Blood and Guts is another guaranteed banger. Then you have MJF/Cole v. JAS for the Tag Tourney Finals. Will they hit the double clothesline???

You could package all those together and already have the makings for a solid PPV.

The MJF/Cole stuff has been so fun to watch. MJF hitting the body slam on Big Bill was hilarious. Reminded me of slamming a fat guy in SDvsRAW. I'm sure they won't but I really want them to become tag champs.

B&G should be a bunch of fun and definitely looking forward to it. Pac vs. Kenny in a singles eventually also gonna be awesome

MJF seems at his best when he has someone to play off of. The stuff with Sammy was great and now this with Cole. He's solid when solo, for sure, but even better in a duo.

I'd love to see them with the tag belts as well.

How I would do it: They keep trying to get the double clothesline, but keep failing. They finally hit it and get the win. Then give them a string of jobber matches putting over the double clothesline as a Hogan leg drop level finisher.

FTR vs Bullet Club is a must watch.

I'm struggling to think of a better tag match shown on TV instead of PPV. The only one that comes to mind is HHH/Austin vs Benoit/Jericho but I haven't seen that in quite a while and it may be romanticized a bit due to the HHH injury and continuing with the match.

Collision has been a fantastic show so far. Feels so different from Dynamite and Rampage while still being different than the WWE formula.

I def +1 that recommendation

I'd put that HHH/Austin vs. Benoit/Jericho on its level.
TLC 3 from SD! 2001 is also fantastic. Obviously that's a bit of a cheat w/being stip match + 3 teams
Funny enough those two matches happened just 3 days apart from one another