This wasn’t just wrestling, it was performance art.
Forbidden Door 2023 was everything wrestling fans could have hoped for. Last year’s edition of the AEW x NJPW cross-promotional show fell flat, largely due to injury and circumstance. This year the dream was delivered on, and in its wake we’re left with the realization that Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay gave us one of the greatest matches in the history of wrestling. That’s not hyperbole.
For 40 minutes, two of the greatest in-ring performers in wrestling today put on a clinic that not only showcased the evolution of the sport, but consistently challenged each other to pull one more trick out of the hat. It was wrestling at its finest, blending storyline beef with real-world competition between two perfectionists trying to one-up each other and assert themselves as the best wrestler in the world.
That’s really the entire crux and drive of this feud. There haven’t been exacerbated promos, no dueling mics, just Kenny Omega, “The Best Bout Machine,” who turned his back on New Japan to form AEW, and Will Ospreay, who believes he’s an even better wrestler — and who stayed in Japan to become the top gaijin in the company.
Omega vs. Ospreay II was extremely different tonally than their first match at WrestleKingdom in February. That match established what these two could do in the ring together. Sunday night was about making this look like they were literally trying to commit murder in the ring — and at times they came alarmingly close to it.
For the uninitiated, this is the Tiger Driver 91. It’s one of the most dangerous wrestling moves ever invented … ever. This was not a botch, or a mistake — it’s just a move with so much inherent lunacy that nobody attempts it anymore. There is no way for either performer to do this safely, and you’re basically banking on the wrestler taking the move to have enough strength in their neck so it doesn’t snap like a twig.
It’s a symbolic move though, it’s about evoking history. The Tiger Driver 91 was used by Mitsuharu Misawa to finish Toshiaki Kawada in the AJPW Super Power Series 1994. It was the means to winning a seemingly unwinnable match between two evenly matched legends. Except in Omega vs. Ospreay it was used to kick the match into another gear, so these two performers could go even further, push deeper into exhaustion and leave everything they had on the mat for the fans in Toronto.
Still, there’s something deeply unsettling about all this, too. There’s an element of the tortured artist to both Omega and Ospreay’s work. Entertaining is one thing, but destroying your body to the levels that both wrestlers are willing to go feels too much at times. Ospreay is already discussing his road to retirement at 30-years-old, a product of damaging his body too much in such a short time. Omega is 39, and still works like a 20-year-old rookie trying to get over. It’s wrestling with the peddle to the floor, as hard as possible, for as long as possible — and not caring if the engine blows up in the process.
There’s absolutely fair criticism that can be leveled against both Omega and Ospreay as performers. At times they rush their spots too much, there are moments that can feel more impactful if allowed a second to breathe — their collective propensity to bounce back from moves can get silly at times, as we saw on Sunday when Ospreay came back from a V-Trigger to deliver a Spanish Fly.
Still, this match was magic. It was the less chaotic moments that really shined. Ospreay locking in Bret Hart’s Sharpshooter, then transitioning into Chris Benoit’s Crossface IN CANADA was well deserved of the “you sick bastard” chants that filled the arena. Rolling up Kenny into the ropes and getting a 2.99 count was utter brilliance, and the area exploding when Omega kicked out of his own One Winged Angel at the one count was one of the most memorable moments in wrestling of the last decade.
If you want to look at wrestlers as a total package of performance, star-power and mic ability then there are certainly arguments who can be made as to who is the “best” in the world right now. When it comes to pure in-ring work, nobody is better than Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay — and they showed that on Sunday night.
A questionable finish and a screwdriver to the head later, Ospreay won the second meeting of these two wrestling titans. The only problem with their match at Forbidden Door is where the heck these two guys can go from here. Obviously the third match is coming, either at All In next month at Wembley Stadium, or at WrestleKingdom 2024. The expectation to top themselves again will be there, not just from fans, but the wrestlers themselves. It’s impossible to imagine how they can ascend any higher than what they achieved on Sunday night, but they will find a way.
And you should be there to watch, because we’re never going to see this kind of performance again.
