If there’s a Forbidden Door 2, it won’t be in Japan.
So said AEW CEO, GM and Head of Creative Tony Khan in a recent interview with the New York Post. But while laying out his reasons, Khan also left the door (no pun intended) open for AEW talent to participate in an event in Japan.
It’ll just need a different name.
“The idea of doing an event over there with AEW stars and New Japan stars is very potentially interesting, but if it happens it won’t be ‘Forbidden Door’,” Khan said to the Post’s Joseph Staszewski. “‘Forbidden Door’ is gonna stay in North America. It wouldn’t make sense with the time zones, the revenue.”
He’s probably right on both counts. To grab the widest possible audience in the U.S., a Forbidden Door in Japan would need to start in the morning — there’s a 14-hour time difference between Tokyo and Chicago right now — and that wouldn’t be great for Japanese fans.
In terms of the gate, the biggest NJPW show of last year, Wrestle Kingdom, had an announced attendance on night one of just over 12,000. That’s thousands less than were in the United Center a few weeks ago, where Khan said the gate was over $1 million.
All of this might come as a bummer to NJPW, whose president Takami Ohbari has already said he’d love it if Forbidden Door 2 could happen in Japan later this year. That seems unlikely given Khan’s comments, but if he allows AEW wrestlers to head overseas for a dual-branded card, does it really matter what it’s called?
The big takeaway here is that there appears to be a desire on the part of both companies to keep working together going forward. Whether that leads to a full-on card in Japan remains to be seen, but we probably haven’t seen the last AEW-NJPW collaboration, no matter what name it ends up sporting.