Last year, when Tony Khan came up with the concept of a New Japan vs. AEW pay-per-view show, called Forbidden Door, there was a lot of criticism with the idea it would not be a success.
The feeling was that while New Japan Pro-Wrestling has some of the best wrestlers in the world, they are known to only a small percentage of American fans. Plus, because so many of the wrestlers involved were not AEW television regulars, the show didn’t have the long-term story lines to grab the audience.
The idea was there was a small audience that would love the shows, but not enough to where the concept would work from a big-market standpoint.
Of course the matches themselves would be good, but AEW presents strong wrestling on almost every television show. And the lure of great matches is historically not a big draw in wrestling, which has always been built around strong personalities and strong story lines.
But the first show last June sold out the United Center in Chicago on the first day tickets were put on sale. The company drew its second million-dollar live gate in its history. It also did just more than 140,000 buys on pay-per-view, proving the concept for the first try as a winner.
The show being successful, completely different from the prior rules about what makes money in pro wrestling, is the biggest example of how YouTube and streaming services have changed the game. Previously so few people would have seen the Tokyo Dome match with Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay on Jan. 4, that its marketability would be minimal in the North American market.
Here, the crowd at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto was electric when the match graphic was shown on the screen, all through the ring entrances, and stayed that way in a match that went nearly 40 minutes.
The two big matches announced were AEW’s Bryan Danielson vs. New Japan’s Kazuchika Okada, and AEW’s Omega vs. New Japan’s Ospreay—four of the best pro wrestlers of this generation in dream matches.
The question went from last year’s criticism of Tony Khan for building around a concept that wasn’t supposed to work, to the question this year of “how big?” While no pay-per-view numbers are available this early, the early indications based on streaming numbers is that it will beat last year’s mark.
AEW, running in Toronto, which means Canadian dollars, drew the biggest live gate in its own company history for Sunday’s joint Forbidden Door pay-per-view with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. It was the third-biggest gate ever in Canada. In North America, it was the biggest number in history for a non-WWE show.
Most tickets were sold before the two key matches were announced. So the live gate record was for the concept based on the quality of the show last year.
The live gate was $1.2 million U.S., a mark that no non-WWE pro wrestling show ever held in North America had reached, which would be about $1.6 million Canadian. Tony Khan said it was a new record for his four-year-old promotion. But it’s a company record that will last barely two months, since it will break it by a minimum of 600% for the company’s next giant event, All In at Wembley Stadium in London on Aug. 27.
It topped WWE’s Elimination Chamber major show held in February in Montreal, by more than $200,000. That was a show built around Roman Reigns vs. Sami Zayn, a match featuring a more traditional concept for a main event and promoted by a far larger and more popular company. It was largely known that the show would be headlined by Zayn, a Montreal native going for WWE’s biggest championship in what was one of the best long-term story lines in years, against an enemy with whom he had recently broken up following a lengthy affiliation.
The Forbidden Door gate was a distant third in Canada, behind two of the most famous matches in history. WWE, then called WWF, made $3,490,857 for the 1990 WrestleMania headlined by Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior. The 2002 WrestleMania featuring Hogan vs. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made $3,846,073. Both shows were held at the much larger Rogers Centre in Toronto, which at the time was known as the SkyDome.
Ospreay and Omega wrestled Jan. 4 at the Tokyo Dome, a match where Omega won IWGP United States title. The consensus at the time was that the 2023 match of the year race was over even though the year had just started. And the race would be for second place.
The second match of the series (technically their third career match because they did a 2015 match for Pro Wrestling Guerrilla in Reseda, Calif.) saw Ospreay regain the title that he lost to Omega at the Tokyo Dome.
It was very different from their first meeting. The first match was more about spectacular athleticism and a few dangerous but thrilling moves. The rematch was more about drama, violence and storytelling with both men’s roles reversed.
Omega was the heel in Tokyo, even though Ospreay is generally a heel in Japan as the leader of the United Empire. NJPW created a situation where Ospreay was in the quest to move out of Omega’s shadow as Japan’s top foreign star. The young guy on the rise against the established legend is classic Japanese wrestling, and with that story, Omega was best served as the villain even though fans cheered both men.
In the rematch, because Omega is Canadian, he was cast as the babyface. Ospreay had worked as a heel in the build, and to hammer it home, he was aligned with Don Callis, the heel manager and rival of Omega who turned on him last month.
Callis aligned himself with Ospreay for just this match. He did pass Ospreay a screwdriver to use, but Omega survived that, and they went several more minutes after the point of the screwdriver was jabbed into Omega’s forehead. The match turned into a bloodbath.
Whether it beat the first meeting is largely based on the reaction to the different styles as well as more dangerous moves, most notably a Tiger Driver ’91 where Omega landed at a scary angle. The Tokyo Dome match had blood, just as this match had some great athletic moves. But the themes and goals were very different.
In each case, the current star of the promotion lost in his home territory. With the series this year tied at 1–1 and both matches being such classics, it would open up things for a third match, unless politically with the two companies working together, the idea was for each company to get a win and then move on.
Courtesy of AEW
The main event on the show was a surprise. Danielson legitimately suffered a broken arm when Okada landed on the arm while doing a Randy Savage–style elbow drop off the top rope. The injury was not known to the fans, who likely saw Danielson having issues moving the arm as great selling.
Danielson continued the match for 10 more minutes. For the finish, the decision was made for Danielson to win via submission. By using a finishing move that he had never used before, the crowd was stunned to the point they were quiet for the climax after a technically excellent match. Okada, Japan’s biggest star of this generation, had submitted only once, in a 2015 match with Shinsuke Nakamura, since he ascended to a main-event position in the company in ’12.
CM Punk, the company’s biggest drawing card, returned earlier in the show to a loud and polarizing reaction.
Punk had returned from a torn triceps, and after a series of incidents in 2022, including a legitimate backstage fight that was the company’s biggest news story of the year, Punk became even more talked about, in very different ways.
Punk had returned June 17 in Chicago to a gigantic babyface reaction in his hometown. The reaction was expected, but nobody knew what to expect when he would appear outside the Chicago area.
And we still don’t know how this will turn out. Punk had both cheers and boos, and both loud, at the June 24 Collision tapings, but the longer his match went, the louder the boos were.
The next night, in a match against New Japan legend Satoshi Kojima, it was the same, if not even louder. Kojima was cheered like wild even though almost any fan would know he had no chance of winning. Toronto is historically a unique crowd, so neither Chicago nor Toronto’s fan reactions necessarily predict the reaction Punk will face over the next several weeks.
And it really doesn’t matter. Punk is there to sell tickets. If people pay to boo him, that’s a good thing. John Cena in his prime was booed at most television tapings, but he also sold more tickets and merchandise than any wrestler since the end of the Stone Cold and Rock era two decades ago. Punk clearly sold tickets in Chicago. Forbidden Door sold based on the concept and was basically sold out long before anyone knew Punk would be on the show. Tickets for the first Toronto show Saturday night did have a substantial late burst. There wasn’t that kind of movement yet in any other market for upcoming Saturday night shows that are built around him, so long term the jury is still out.
The next few months will be very interesting for the promotion. In adding a second two-hour show Saturday night in prime time, the question to be answered is if this new exposure builds up the audiences, or burns them out. Between WWE and AEW, there will be 12 first-run hours of pro wrestling programming every week, with five nights of prime-time fare. And there will be even more on pay-per-view weeks.
AEW is now producing three nights of weekly television. If ratings stay high enough and the cable stations stay viable enough to where live programming continues to earn more money, they could easily become the most financially successful non-WWE promotion in the history of the industry.
If too many hours lead to oversaturation and lower viewing figures, or cable television dies and streaming services won’t pay similar money, it could also spoil that from happening.
