Highscores AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2022 – Bleacher Report

Forbidden Door also portrayed the latest in FTR’s significant race as the undisputed best team in professional wrestling, the coronation of PAC as All-Atlantic champion and another amazing performance by Orange Cassidy that stole the show.

Dive deeper into these topics with this summary of Sunday’s PPV.

Credits: All Elite Wrestling

If the huge ovation that greeted the FTR at the United Center wasn’t proof enough, the reaction to Cash Wheeler bravely defending his Ring of Honor Tag Team Championships against United Empire’s IWGP tag titles and Roppongi Vice challenges by Trent Beretta and Rocky Romero certainly was.

Dax Harwood prevented the fall long enough for his partner to reappear from the locker room after a shoulder injury and join him in the win while FTR further established itself as the best team in professional wrestling.

They’re not overly popular because of some kind of trick or because they have flashy moves or stupid phrases. They are popular because, when it rings, no other team can match their consistent excellence between the ropes.

We saw that again on Sunday night when Wheeler and Harwood, Beretta and Romero, Jeff Cobb and Great O-Khan performed a dramatic, physical match that made fans think for a moment that FTR could give up the ROH title tag. Instead, they added IWGP belts to the resume that includes six other championships in multiple promotions.

That resume, along with the aforementioned bell-to-bell excellence and raw emotions they exude during their matches, supports all claims that FTR is the best in the world.

Credits: All Elite Wrestling

PAC has been All Elite since day one and even managed to beat Kenny Omega early in his run. Three years later, however, he has not yet earned a single championship with a promotion, despite being in the fight for them several times.

That drought ended on Sunday when The Bastard defeated Mira, Malakai Black and Clark Connors of New Japan Pro-Wrestling and won the all-new All-Atlantic Championship.

The victory came with a submission over Connors, which from the start felt like an obvious drop. Still, the young star appeared and showed up in front of an international audience, leaving viewers impressed by his contributions.

Miro was predictably portrayed as a monster and lost nothing in defeat, thanks to Black’s cerebral and manipulative use of his trademark fog.

PAC’s victory paid off a long way to champion glory; a journey that sometimes included questionable reservations and a global pandemic that prevented him from traveling to the United States.

With his profession now holding gold, he continues his role as one of the leading competitors in the AEW and potentially re-engages him in the interview for the World Cup.

Expect Miro, who was eliminated from the competition after Black apparently broke the rules, to appear as an early candidate for The Bastard’s new title.

Credits: All Elite Wrestling

There are some who will call Orange Cassidy a comedian. They would be right.

Interrupting this discussion does a disservice to the performer as he is.

Cassidy is more than a factory of laughter. Above his ability to generate a punch for putting his hands in his pockets or mockingly kicking his opponents ’shins, he is a wrestler whose timing is outstanding and whose ability to socialize with top workers in today’s ring is criminally underestimated.

We have witnessed this many times, mostly against the PAC, Chris Jerich and Kenny Omega. On numerous occasions, he gave fans what they expected in the form of his theatricality, only to then light the planes and prove that he was equally capable of parrying world performers. That came to light again on Sunday when he frustrated Will Ospreay early on with his antics and then nearly beat him on numerous occasions.

Eventually, he succumbed to the United States IWGP champion Stormbreaker, but not before he was half the second thief.

It was another example of a greatly underrated guy who secretly had one of the best games on the map with one of the most famous performers in the ring.

There will also be some who will not be helped by any outstanding performance against any world-famous competitor. He will always see Cassidy as a joke.

For everyone else, Freshly Squeezed represents an almost perfect combination of showmanship and time that helped him establish both as a wildly popular outcast and an adaptable advantage at AEW.

Jon Moxley is the new AEW interim world champion after defeating Hiroshi Tanahashi in the Forbidden Door main event, and Claudio Castagnoli has finally arrived at the company as a hand-picked replacement for Bryan Danielson against Zack Sabre Jr.

The long-awaited title won and the eagerly awaited arrival of the previously famous Cesar hit the headlines on Sunday night and also established the Blackpool Combat Club as the No. 1 faction in the company.

That says something given the presence of the Elite, the Jericho Society of Gratitude, the Death Triangle, The House of Black, and The Undisputed Elite. But none of these groups had an impact on William Regal’s ass collection in such a short time.

From the introduction of Moxley and Danielson as founding members to the rise of young Wheeler Yuta and now the arrival of Castagnoli, the faction has somehow managed to add to this without diluting or diminishing the influence of its members.

Of the four competitors, three are valuable world champion titles. Yuta is one of the faces of the company’s future, and Regal is just as good a manager / messenger as he is in wrestling. Together they form an imposing and dominant faction that the competition will be almost impossible to overcome.

We witnessed this in the final moments of Sunday’s PPV, where Moxley, Castagnoli, Yuta and fellow babyfaces Eddie Kingston, Santana and Ortiz cleared JAS from circle to square. We’ll probably see that again on Wednesday, when the faction will fight Jericho and his merry group of heels in Blood & Guts.

If I can continue to maintain this momentum, there’s no reason why BCC can’t dominate AEW, both as babyfaces and heels if necessary, while bringing into the show a ferocity and physicality that few others can replicate.

Castagnoli’s public embrace and acceptance of Moxley’s title win suggest the group’s popularity will only grow from now on. That’s a good thing for everyone involved and, above all, AEW, which now has a faction around which it can build, that doesn’t include Jericho, The Young Bucks or Kenny Omega.