AEW Dynamite arrives tonight from Sugar Land, Texas with Forbidden Door now only two weeks away, and that is where the pressure starts to become impossible to ignore. Last week’s Summer Blockbuster episode of Dynamite did a lot of heavy lifting. Swerve Strickland survived Brody King to reach the Men’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament final against Will Ospreay. Mark Briscoe beat PAC, backed MJF into a corner and forced the AEW World Champion into a six-on-six steel cage match at Forbidden Door. Jon Moxley retained the AEW Continental Championship before Shane Taylor Promotions left the Death Riders laying. Maya World turned tragedy into one of the most emotional wins AEW has delivered all year. Kenny Omega accepted Zack Sabre Jr.’s challenge. Thekla continued aiming her venom at STARDOM. On paper, AEW moved a lot of pieces into position. The problem is that Forbidden Door is supposed to be an AEW, NJPW, STARDOM and CMLL supercard, and two weeks out, the build still feels more AEW-heavy than truly international. There are pieces of the concept starting to show up, but there still has not been enough CMLL presence, NJPW has mostly been filtered through video packages and select names, and STARDOM has only recently started to feel like more than a talking point. Tonight needs to close that gap.
Here is everything advertised for tonight’s show
- Mercedes Moné vs. Hazuki (Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament semifinal match)
- AEW World Champion MJF and Mark Briscoe select their teams for the Forbidden Door six-on-six steel cage match
- AEW World Champion MJF’s Team vs Mark Briscoe’s Team (12 Man Tag Team Match)
- Will Ospreay vs Swerve Strickland Face-To-Face
Last week’s Dynamite worked because it felt like a show with momentum, even when it was crowded. Your recap nailed the tone of the night: it was not a perfect episode, but it felt urgent. AEW had the show moving like the first act of a summer action movie where every story was either exploding, about to explode, or clearly being aimed at Forbidden Door. That is the good part. The concern is whether AEW is building Forbidden Door as an actual cross-promotional showcase or simply using the name as a backdrop for AEW storylines that would have existed anyway.
That contrast matters tonight.
Swerve Strickland defeating Brody King was the right call if AEW wanted the biggest possible Owen Cup final. Swerve versus Will Ospreay at Forbidden Door feels like a major match because both men are chasing more than a trophy. Ospreay is chasing Wembley. Swerve is chasing his way back to the top. The winner earns a future AEW World Championship opportunity, and that gives the match real weight. But the way Swerve won matters just as much as the result. Brody King looked like a monster who almost dragged Swerve into deep water and drowned him there. Swerve needed Prince Nana, a referee distraction, a ring bell shot and the Vertebreaker to survive. That does not make Swerve look weak, but it does make him look more desperate. That is where the Ospreay match becomes more interesting. Ospreay is walking into Forbidden Door as the cleaner hero, the world-class ace chasing the biggest stage of his career. Swerve is walking in as the former champion who still has greatness, but also still has that edge where he will do whatever he needs to do if the moment starts slipping away.
That is a strong AEW story. It is just not much of a Forbidden Door story yet.
The same goes for MJF and Mark Briscoe. Briscoe beating PAC last week gave him another major win, but the real victory came afterward when he finally found a way to force MJF into a fight. MJF has spent weeks trying to dismiss Briscoe as beneath him, trying to act like money, status and insults can keep Briscoe away from the AEW World Championship. Briscoe’s response was perfect for his character: if the champion will not give him a path, he will drag him into a cage and make him survive it. The stipulation is simple. Team Briscoe wins, Mark gets his title shot. Team MJF wins, MJF escapes another problem.
Tonight’s team selection segment has to do more than fill names onto a graphic. It needs to tell us what kind of war Forbidden Door is actually getting. Briscoe should not just pick friends. He needs fighters. The Conglomeration makes obvious sense because Orange Cassidy, Kyle O’Reilly, Roderick Strong and Tomohiro Ishii all fit the idea of Briscoe building a team of stubborn, tough, slightly chaotic warriors who hate MJF almost as much as they respect the fight. MJF, on the other hand, does not need loyalty. He needs bodies. Last week, he already proved that when he bought access to the Don Callis Family and got Kevin Knight to agree to stand with him in exchange for a future AEW World Championship opportunity.
That is where the story becomes messy in the best and worst ways.
Kevin Knight has a real reason to join Team MJF, but he also has TNT Championship business, Darby Allin breathing down his neck, Don Callis pulling strings, Speedball Mike Bailey still orbiting the picture and Andrade El Ídolo growing increasingly irritated with Callis making promises to everyone. Andrade beat Orange Cassidy last week, and that win should have made him feel like a serious world title contender. Instead, he keeps watching Callis maneuver around him. Knight wants the world title. Andrade wants the world title. MJF is promising things he may not intend to honor. Callis is taking money. Darby is out for revenge. That is a lot of moving parts, and AEW has to be careful not to turn a strong central story into a traffic jam.
Collision helped push some of those threads forward, but it also underlined the same issue. Kenny Omega defeated Bad Dude Tito in his first match since Double or Nothing, and the match did what it needed to do. Tito gave Omega a physical test, Omega took some punishment, fought back with the Snap Dragon, V-Trigger and One-Winged Angel, then used his post-match promo to make the Zack Sabre Jr. match feel like more than a dream match. Omega framed ZSJ as the key to proving he can still climb back to the top. That is exactly what Forbidden Door should be. A match with history, style contrast, pride and a real question attached to it. Is Omega still that guy, or is ZSJ about to dissect what is left of the legend?
That match has the international feel Forbidden Door needs. AEW needs more of that tonight.
Thekla versus Starlight Kid also finally gives the women’s world title picture a real Forbidden Door direction. Last week on Dynamite, Thekla’s STARDOM video package gave her issue a personal edge. Collision turned that into an official AEW Women’s World Championship match when STARDOM sent Starlight Kid. Thekla’s promos have been ugly, bitter and intentionally toxic, but they have also given the match a reason to exist beyond “AEW champion faces STARDOM wrestler.” She hates what STARDOM represents in her past. Starlight Kid entering AEW as the one sent to answer her gives the story a clear emotional line.
Still, the criticism stands: it took too long for this to start feeling active.
Forbidden Door is supposed to feature AEW, NJPW, STARDOM and CMLL. Right now, STARDOM has Hazuki in the Owen semifinal and Starlight Kid challenging Thekla. NJPW has Zack Sabre Jr., Bad Dude Tito in the warm-up role, The Dogs beating The Young Bucks on Collision, and Tomohiro Ishii likely being tied into the Briscoe side. CMLL has Persephone involved in the TBS Championship Survival of the Fittest picture after beating Julia Hart, but there has not been nearly enough CMLL presence on Dynamite to make the promotion feel like a major part of Forbidden Door. That is the disconnect. AEW can say this is a four-promotional event, but the television has to show that. Otherwise, Forbidden Door starts to feel like an AEW pay-per-view with a few international guests instead of a true collision of worlds.
Mercedes Moné versus Hazuki is the biggest advertised match for tonight because it is the one match that can directly help fix part of that problem. Mercedes returned as the wild card after six months away, and the presentation around her has made it clear she is not back to blend in. She is back to remind everyone that the division still belongs to her, or at least that she believes it does. Hazuki cannot just be treated like an obstacle on the way to a bigger Mercedes match. That would be the easy mistake. Hazuki needs enough offense, urgency and edge to make this feel like STARDOM has arrived on Dynamite with something to prove.
The obvious direction feels like Mercedes advancing, especially with the Women’s Owen final needing star power at Forbidden Door. But predictable does not have to mean lazy. If Mercedes wins, the match still needs to show why Hazuki mattered. If Hazuki pushes her, frustrates her, forces her to wrestle at a higher speed and makes Mercedes dig deeper than she expected, then AEW gets the best of both worlds: Mercedes moves forward, and STARDOM feels important. If Hazuki is treated like a temporary roadblock, then the criticism about Forbidden Door’s weak cross-promotional build only gets louder.
The other Women’s Owen semifinal is Athena versus Maya World on Collision, and that may quietly be the better emotional story. Maya’s win over Skye Blue last week was not just a tournament upset. It was one of those moments where wrestling works because the real-life emotion is impossible to fake. She wrestled through grief, stepped into a spot she was not originally scheduled for, and turned a terrible week into the biggest opportunity of her career. Athena’s response on Collision was cold but effective. She showed sympathy just long enough to remind everyone that sympathy will not stop her from chasing the one thing she has not been able to conquer. Teacher versus student, champion versus Cinderella, ambition versus emotion. That is the kind of story the Owen tournament needed.
Collision’s Cincinnati Street Fight also deserves attention because it was the kind of ridiculous, bloody, violent main event that AEW can still deliver when it commits to chaos. Death Riders versus Shane Taylor Promotions started outside the arena and eventually turned into a full-on weapons war. Moxley bled. Garcia bled. Claudio threw bodies around like the strongest man in the building. Marina Shafir had one of the wildest spots of the night when she was dropped feet-first into tacks, glass and army men, then fought back with her feet covered in the wreckage. Moxley eventually pinned Shane Taylor after the Death Riders rallied and overwhelmed him, but STP did not leave the feud looking like bodies. They looked dangerous, aggressive and willing to drag the Death Riders into a fight ugly enough to matter.
That is important because AEW has been at its best lately when the violence has a purpose. Moxley versus Taylor on Dynamite was not pretty, and it was not supposed to be. It was a fight that spilled into Collision. The street fight then escalated the issue and gave STP credibility even in defeat. That is how you keep a faction alive after losing a big match.
The rest of Collision added useful movement, even if some of it felt like setup more than payoff. Kevin Knight retained the TNT Championship over Myron Reed in a match that gave Reed enough shine to feel dangerous before Knight finished him with the uranage. Jake Doyle beating Speedball Mike Bailey gave the Don Callis Family more momentum, but it also continued the issue of Callis having too many ambitious pieces moving in different directions. The Dogs beating The Young Bucks was a big win for David Finlay and Clark Connors, and it was one of the stronger NJPW-adjacent moments of the week. Persephone defeating Julia Hart gave CMLL representation a meaningful win, though it still feels like AEW needs to do more with CMLL than simply place one name into the TBS title picture. Hikaru Shida qualifying for Survival of the Fittest helped fill out the vacant TBS Championship story, but that story is now competing for space with the Owen, Thekla’s title defense, Mercedes’ return and Athena/Maya’s emotional semifinal.
That is the larger issue with AEW right now. The product has stories. It has matches. It has talent. It has enough chaos to keep television moving. But Forbidden Door needs sharper focus. Tonight cannot just be another episode where everything moves a few inches. It needs to make June 28 feel closer, bigger and more international.
If MJF and Briscoe reveal teams that feel important, the steel cage match becomes a real pay-per-view hook instead of a stipulation waiting for names. If Mercedes and Hazuki deliver a serious semifinal, the Women’s Owen tournament gains credibility and STARDOM gets the spotlight it needs. If AEW gives more time to Kenny Omega and Zack Sabre Jr., Thekla and Starlight Kid, and any CMLL involvement beyond name value, Forbidden Door starts feeling like Forbidden Door. If not, the show risks becoming another AEW-heavy build with a forbidden label slapped on top.
Current Owen Hart Foundation Tournament standings
Men’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament
- Will Ospreay advanced to the final
- Swerve Strickland advanced to the final after defeating Brody King
- Final at Forbidden Door: Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland
- Winner receives a future AEW World Championship opportunity
Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament
- Mercedes Moné vs. Hazuki takes place tonight in the semifinal
- Athena vs. Maya World takes place on Collision in the semifinal
- The winners advance to the final at Forbidden Door
- Winner receives a future AEW Women’s World Championship opportunity
Current and updated AEW Forbidden Door card
- Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland (Men’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Final)
- TBD vs. TBD (Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Final)
- Thekla (c) vs Starlight Kid (AEW Women’s World Championship)
- Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
- Team MJF vs. Team Mark Briscoe in a six-on-six steel cage match
- If Team Briscoe wins, Mark Briscoe earns an AEW World Championship opportunity
Final Thoughts
Tonight’s AEW Dynamite has a simple job, but not an easy one.
AEW needs to make Forbidden Door feel like it is two weeks away, not two months away. Last week’s Dynamite was strong because it had urgency. Collision was strong because it gave several stories follow-up instead of leaving them hanging. Now Dynamite has to connect those pieces into something sharper.
Mercedes Moné versus Hazuki needs to feel like a major Owen Cup semifinal, not a stepping stone. MJF and Mark Briscoe selecting teams needs to feel like the beginning of a cage war, not a roll call. Kenny Omega, Zack Sabre Jr., Thekla, Starlight Kid, CMLL, STARDOM and NJPW all need a stronger presence if Forbidden Door is truly going to feel like the four-promotional showcase it is being advertised as.
AEW has the pieces. It has the matches. It has enough stories to get there.
Tonight is where the build has to stop teasing the door and actually start kicking it open.
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I’m the quiet one until the bell rings then I’ve got takes. I live for WWE NXT and TNA, I want every promotion to succeed, and I will absolutely roast the bad decisions on sight (because someone has to). Anime taught me to respect long-term storytelling; wrestling taught me that sometimes the plan is “we panicked” and called it “unpredictable.” The Miz got me into all of this, so yeah I appreciate confidence, commitment, and the art of talking like you’re already the main event. Now I bring that same energy to the page as the main writer for Late Night Crew Wrestling because if you’re not here to be must-see and tell the truth, why are you here?!