Several matches, including Will Ospreay defeating Kenny Omega for the IWGP United States Title and Bryan Danielson defeating Kazuchika Okada in the main event, were highly praised in the second installment of the AEW x NJPW: Forbidden Door pay-per-view event.
Dave Meltzer stated on Wrestling Observer Radio that the show is trending upward from the Double or Nothing pay-per-view in 2022. More information will be available in Friday’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Meltzer said, “As far as TV viewers, TV pay-per=view, which is the only number that I have right now. It was 12% higher than the previous two shows were on the same day, which is the Wednesday after the show. If it grows like the other two shows did, then it’ll be a big number. And it also, you know, is going to do you know, besides how it does in the United States, It’s also going to do much bigger in Japan than the other pay-per-views because of the new Japan guys. What is that? That’s, you know, five to eight, somewhere between five and 10,000 more buys, you know, plus the normal, whatever this number’s gonna be. Whether it’s 150, 155, maybe a little lower, I don’t know. That’s not including the Japan buys. I expect it to end up as the biggest, at least since Double or Nothing last year.
“And there’s a shot if the late buys are big, that it could…that it might be able to approach that Double or Nothing from 2022, I think. If they have really big late buys, they can do it. Late buys are usually, you know, based on word of mouth of the show being great. And I think that everything that people have said, and everything that’s been talked about is that like, this was a great show with, perhaps the greatest match in AEW history, perhaps the greatest match ever in North America.
“I mean, things like that have been said. And so I think, you know, based on that, it might do well on late buys. It might do very well on late buys. The numbers are, you know, from what I’ve seen, the numbers are encouraging. The movie theater numbers were up, um, from the last show and the last show’s movie theater numbers were very good. The Double or Nothing. So, overall the news is good there.”
