The 2023 Forbidden Door was the second annual Forbidden Door professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event and supershow co-produced by the American promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and the Japan-based New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). It took place on June 25, 2023, at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was AEW's first PPV to be held outside of the United States and NJPW's first traditional PPV to be held in Canada. Forbidden Door was also the first non-WWE PPV event to be held in Toronto in what was Air Canada Centre since World Championship Wrestling (WCW)'s Mayhem event on November 21, 1999.
Fourteen matches were contested at the event, including four on Zero Hour pre-show as well as one dark match. In the main event, Bryan Danielson defeated Kazuchika Okada by submission. In other prominent matches, Will Ospreay defeated Kenny Omega to win the IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship, The Elite ("Hangman" Adam Page, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson), Eddie Kingston, and Tomohiro Ishii defeated Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, and Claudio Castagnoli), Konosuke Takeshita, and Shota Umino in a 10-man tag team match, Sanada defeated "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry to retain the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, and in the opening bout, MJF defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to retain the AEW World Championship.
Production
Background
In February 2021, the American professional wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW) started a partnership with the Japanese promotion, New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). After a year of AEW and NJPW wrestlers appearing on each other's shows, the two companies co-promoted a pay-per-view (PPV) event titled Forbidden Door in June 2022. The event took its name from the same term often used by AEW when referring to working with other professional wrestling promotions.
On March 15, 2023, a second Forbidden Door event between AEW and NJPW was scheduled to be held on June 25, 2023, at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, thus establishing Forbidden Door as an annual event between the two companies. Tickets went on sale on March 24. This marked AEW's first PPV held outside of the United States and also kicked off a month-long tour of Canada for AEW, which includes their weekly television programs and house shows.
Forbidden Door was the first Canadian event co-promoted by NJPW to air on traditional PPV outlets. Prior to its acquisition, AEW's sibling promotion, Ring of Honor, then-owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, co-promoted two Global Wars events with NJPW in 2014 and 2015, both of which were held in Toronto and aired live on internet pay-per-view (iPPV). This event also marked the first non-WWE pay-per-view event to be held in Toronto since November 21, 1999, when Mayhem, produced by the former World Championship Wrestling (WCW), took place at what was then called the Air Canada Centre.
Storylines
Forbidden Door featured professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.<
On the April 26 episode of AEW Dynamite, AEW president Tony Khan announced that tournament matches for the second annual Owen Hart Cup would occur at Forbidden Door. On the June 21 episode, the brackets were revealed, with two matches to be held during the PPV: ROH Women's World Champion Athena facing Billie Starkz in the women's tournament during the pre-show and CM Punk facing Satoshi Kojima in the men's tournament, marking Punk's first appearance on an AEW PPV since All Out 2022, where he main evented before being involved in the legitimate backstage fight.