AEW
Dynamite was the go-home show for Forbidden Door, the AEW x NJPW crossover on June 26. It’s such a shame that Tony Khan is having to deal with the absolute worst succession of injuries in the young company’s life. Kenny Omega, CM Punk, Matt Hardy, The Bunny, and Dante Martin, to name but a few.
Brian Danielson came to the ring to announce that he’s not cleared to wrestle Zack Sabre Junior, nor compete in Blood and Guts next week; but he has picked his replacement to fight the ZSJ – the former Cesaro, anyone?
The full card for Forbidden Door was announced as:
- Interim AEW World Championship: Jon Moxley vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
- IWGP World Heavyweight Championship: Jay White (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada vs. Hangman Page vs. Adam Cole
- AEW All-Atlantic Championship: Malakai Black vs. PAC vs. Miro vs. Tomohiro Ishii
- AEW Women’s World Championship: Thunder Rosa (c) vs. Toni Storm
- IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championships / ROH World Tag Team Championships: United Empire (Jeff Cobb & Great-O-Khan) (c) vs. FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) (c) vs. Roppongi Vice (Trent Beretta & Rocky Romero)
- IWGP US Championship: Will Ospreay (c) vs. Orange Cassidy
- Chris Jericho, Minoru Suzuki & Sammy Guevara vs. Eddie Kingston, Wheeler Yuta & Shota Umino
- Zack Sabre Jr. vs. TBA
- Bullet Club (Young Bucks, El Phantasmo & Hikuleo) vs. Dudes with Attitudes (Sting, Darby Allin, Shingo Takagi & Hiromu Takahashi)
- Buy-In: Max Caster & Gunn Club (Billy Gunn, Austin Gunn & Colten Gunn) vs. LA Dojo (Yuya Uemura, Alex Coughlin, Kevin Knight & The DKC)
Upsettingly for LIJ marks like myself, Andrade isn’t allowed to appear at all, thanks to the complicated web of relations between New Japan and the Mexican promotions CMLL and AAA. A reunion between El Idolo, Rush, and Tetsuya Naito seems off the cards for 2022. Boo!
Which matches are you looking forward to? Have AEW done enough to educate casual fans on who the New Japan competitors are?
NJPW
The G1 Climax blocks were announced this week for the largest version of the tournament yet, which will be kicking off on July 16th. 28 competitors in four blocks! Though sadly no Mox, Danielson, or any other dream competitors from AEW.
Who is your pick for the ultimate winner of the tournament? I think Okada, White, Naito and Ospreay are (probably) locks to win their blocks, but who will eventually triumph, I’m not sure. Probably Okada so he will regain the championship at the Tokyo Dome. Otherwise I’d go for Ospreay; two foreign heels main eventing Wrestle Kingdom does not sound at all likely though. Okada it is then!
WWE
Um… Brock Lesnar versus Roman Reigns 13, anyone?
ELSEWHERE
On Saturday Tijuana hosted the second of three Triplemania shows this year to commemorate AAA’s 30th anniversary; if you’re familiar at all with these shows this one followed their tried and true mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous and some truly distracting advertising. If you love crazy spotfests I heartily recommend the five-way between Laredo Kid, Taurus, Bandido, El Hijo del Vikingo and Rey Fenix. These lads really pull off some insane moves. At the time of writing, the full show is still available to watch on Twitch.
One of the most exciting young prospects for the future, Nick Wayne (still a baby at only 17), faced his dream opponent Will Ospreay at GCW’s I Never Liked You show on the 19th. Here’s a lovely mini-documentary from behind the scenes:
In other other news, a Redditor discovered on an old VHS tape the long-lost Girls Gone Wild: Live from Spring Break WWE/Girls Gone Wild crossover pay-per-view event which aired once on March 13th, 2003. It was a complete disaster at the time, and now unearthed, is a perfect time capsule of all the worst elements of the dawn of the new century. Warning! Not only is this VERY NSFW, it’s also absolutely flaming garbage, so much so Vimeo won’t let me even link to it!