It looks like the battle over who gets to “claim” the Go to Sleep isn’t going to happen this weekend after all.
Fightful Select (subscription required) says it learned Kenta “expressed to NJPW and AEW that he isn’t facing CM Punk at the Forbidden Door show,” and that word began making the rounds last weekend at the premiere episode of AEW Collision.
Kenta has been pretty adamant on social media that he had no plans to wrestle CM Punk at the show in Toronto, so on one hand, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Still, many fans hoped it was all part of the build when Kenta tweeted that Tony Khan would need to pay him a ton of money to appear, and that things would trend in that direction this week.
Fightful Select’s sources say that was indeed the plan, “but as of this weekend, it wasn’t happening.” That would seem to suggest Kenta won’t be on the card at all.
As for Punk, it would be a bit strange for AEW to make such a big deal about his return on Collision and then leave him out of a big event immediately in its wake. Fightful’s report noted that “there were other options being evaluated” for him; commenters on the article thought that perhaps the storyline with MJF threatening to no-show the event would play out and leave Punk to face Hiroshi Tanahashi — a match that was supposed to happen last year at Forbidden Door before Punk was injured.
Considering that Punk was protected on Collision by working in a six-man tag match, it also wouldn’t be a shock if AEW continued to be cautious and worked up another multi-person match for him — NJPW wrestlers are well accustomed to being part of six- and eight-man tags. That won’t quite have the same impact as Punk vs. Kenta would have for some hardcore wrestling fans, but just seeing Punk at Forbidden Door at all should be fine for the masses.