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AEW, NJPW, CMLL, and STARDOM are set to invade Long Island, New York this Sunday with the third annual Forbidden Door pay-per-view. Both AEW's and NJPW's top titles will be on the line, as Swerve Strickland defends the AEW World Championship against Will Ospreay while Jon Moxley defends the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship against the man he took it from, Tetsuya Naito.
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Leading up to the biggest crossover show of the year, WWE Hall of Famer — and vocal AEW critic — Eric Bischoff provided his preview for the event on his "83 Weeks" podcast, discussing what he expects to see on the other side of the Forbidden Door.
"Great athleticism, probably a great example of what's technically possible from a physical perspective inside the ring," Bischoff said. "Athletes are getting bigger, faster, stronger, and just better in every sport, and the same is true in professional wrestling, so we'll see a lot of that. Probably buckets of blood. We'll see very little in-ring story. The only story that will exist will be in the imaginations of the minds of the die-hard AEW fans, because a lot of the action people enjoy seeing is so non-sensical, it's hard to suspend any disbelief. You're simply watching an exhibition of athleticism."
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Bischoff went on to compare watching AEW programming to watching an Olympic gymnastics routine, in that he is in awe of what people can train the human body to do, and enjoys watching the exhibition of athleticism at such a high level. However, without any stories attached to the matches, Bischoff simply sees AEW has a promotion full of highly impressive tumbling routines with little to no storytelling substance. Of course, this is a familiar criticism from Bischoff, who has been hammering the point relentlessly since at least March 2022, including two other occasions in late June 2024 alone.
Please credit "83 Weeks" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
