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Bryan Danielson Dream Match Set For AEW-NJPW Forbidden Door PPV

By John Canton • Published 4th June 2023
Bryan Danielson

Bryan Danielson issued a huge challenge to a New Japan Pro Wrestling legend and the match is official for the AEW-NJPW Forbidden Door pay-per-view.

The second AEW-NJPW Forbidden Door pay-per-view is set to take place in three weeks on June 25th at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.

Both companies have had major shows recently with AEW holding Double or Nothing last week in Las Vegas. As for NJPW, they held their Dominion PPV today (June 4th) in Osaka, Japan with some AEW wrestlers on the show including one big name that appeared in a video.

One of the matches at Dominion saw Chaos (Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii) and Hiroshi Tanahashi defeat Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli) and Shota Umino to retain the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championships.

After the match was over, Moxley cued a video from his Blackpool Combat Club ally Bryan Danielson (who was not at Dominion). That led to Bryan Danielson issuing a challenge to Okada for a dream match at Forbidden Door in Toronto.

“For the last 10 years, I’ve heard people talk about how great you are. How you’re the best wrestler of this generation.”

“I’ve also heard in interviews, that you’ve said you want to wrestle me, that you want to fight me.”

“Watching you, you’re good, I know you’re good, but I am the litmus test of great!”

“You wanna wrestle Bryan Danielson. You call yourself The Rainmaker, but you step in the ring with me and you’re getting into the f**king desert! And there ain’t gonna be no rain.”

After the video aired, Kazuchika Okada grabbed the microphone and delivered this reply to Bryan Danielson: “Forbidden Door has been opened.”

For more than 20 years, Bryan Danielson has been considered one of the best pro wrestlers in the world and the same can be said about Kazuchika Okada over the last 15 years. It truly is a dream match between a WWE/AEW wrestling legend and one of the greatest NJPW wrestlers ever.

At the 2022 Forbidden Door pay-per-view, Bryan Danielson was going to face Zack Sabre Jr. at the show, but an injury caused Danielson to miss the event.