It’s been well established that this was not the best episode of “Dynamite” to hype up fans ahead of Forbidden Door on Sunday, and maybe Tony Khan doesn’t think the sickos need much hype, but a little more thought could have gone into the promos ahead of the 12-man steel cage match, pitting Team MJF-DCF against Team Mark Briscoe.
The teams’ backstage promos were extremely forgettable. All I remember from Team Babyface was Darby Allin yelling about AEW World Champion MJF, and the fact I thought it was strange that Briscoe himself wasn’t involved. He did, however, come out in a rather annoying way later on. As for Team MJF and the Don Callis Family, Callis revealed a goofy shirt of his “painting” of himself and MJF he wants all the team members to wear on Sunday, and MJF interrupted Callis’ introduction of Andrade. Not much excitement surrounding any of it, and I stupidly thought that’s where it would end, especially after last week’s 12-man tag team match, sans cage.
After the main event, where Team Babyface member Konosuke Takeshita successfully defended the International Championship against Ricochet, Briscoe finally made his way out to cut his own promo on MJF, because if his team wins Sunday, he gets a shot at the AEW World Championship. By this point, especially after a main event with a solid match, I was already beyond checked out, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, despite knowing that AEW has such consistent, long overruns.
I didn’t need to hear Briscoe respond to MJF’s promo from earlier in the night, as the show was coming to a close. It might have been better if it were more believable that he had a shot at MJF’s title, as it feels like that scene is set going into All In: London. Of course, this led to yet another brawl, and ended with MJF accidentally knocking down Andrade, then Briscoe hitting the Jay Driller to the champion.
While this tried to give some flavor of hype to the match ahead of Sunday, I just don’t think it worked, and maybe that’s because AEW already did the match last week. Maybe tonight could have focused more on the infighting in MJF’s team, with Andrade and Kevin Knight also coming after the gold, or maybe just between Briscoe and MJF. This may be a big match on Sunday in terms of how many men are going to be in the ring, but as they’re all AEW guys, it doesn’t feel very “Forbidden Door.”
Written by Daisy Ruth
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