Another "AEW Dynamite" has come and gone, inching us all one week closer to Forbidden Door. The show had a bevy of matches made for the June 28 supershow, including the announcement of the two teams that will face off in the 12-man Steel Cage Match, but all of that has been handily taken care of on the AEW Dynamite 6-17-2026 results page, and you can read about it there.For now, the Wrestling Inc. Staff are going to take a moment to discuss what worked and what didn't from Wednesday's show in Texas. As always, the highs were high, like Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland's showdown ahead of their Men's Owen Hart Cup Final, and the lows were pretty damn low, such as the weird booking of Kenny Omega.Enough of my bloviating though, let's get into the main event, the loveds and the hateds for this week's edition of Dynamite.
With all due respect to Zack Sabre Jr., and STARDOM's Starlight Kid, where the f*** are all the outsiders? For a show called "Forbidden Door," the talent are feeling oddly bidden. Yota Tsuji has already made it clear that he and his IWGP Heavyweight Title will be boycotting, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the New Japan Roster can't show up on the 28th.Granted, there are only 7 matches announced, and without exaggeration, that means that there could be 7 more matches added between now and showtime. After all, AEW doesn't book shows by half-measures.Still, if they end up leaving too many NJPW and CMLL announcements for the week of the show, it could lead to them feeling less-than; like an afterthought to the road to All In.I have no qualms with the matches, in fact I'm downright excited for a few of them. It just doesn't feel like the show's conceit is being upheld. Name this show anything else, and I'd say that it was a damn fine build, but the "Forbidden Door" nomenclature hangs over it like a shadow. It's like being on the road to Elimination Chamber, and WWE not even bothering to book the titular match until the week of. While that might actually happen in this weird TKO/Private Equity era, it would still be as disappointing as the lack of special guests on this year's road to Forbidden Door.Written by Ross Berman
Andrade El Idolo remains one of the most interesting characters on "Dynamite," and he showed that within the first few minutes of the show tonight. Last week, it was obvious he wasn't thrilled with Don Callis accepting money from AEW World Champion MJF to have the Don Callis Family team up with him for the 12-man cage match at Forbidden Door, and Andrade made his distaste very clear tonight.During the opening segment, where Callis announced who would be on MJF's team, it looked as though he was about to say Trent Beretta was the final member. However, he pivoted at the last moment to reveal it would be Andrade, and "El Idolo" was not pleased. He started to get in MJF's face, but Callis talked him down, though this was the first time I felt like Callis was pretty short with Andrade. He said he'd be a great world champion someday, but today isn't that day, so he just needs to do the match.I feel like all the brushing off of Andrade is going to come back to bite Callis, and it should bite MJF, as well, but he has other opponents right now, and I'm not sure if Andrade is going to make the cut ahead of All In. The pair disagreed as to who was going to start the match in the main event tonight, and Andrade got in MJF's face once again, but that didn't last long.They kind of worked together during a post-match beatdown, and Andrade helped the champion by picking up Briscoe for MJF to hit him with the diamond ring. Though he was helpful, the final shot of the show was excellent and poignant, with Team MJF celebrating, outside of Andrade, who was sitting on the turnbuckle rather than posing.I thought maybe we'd get a full Andrade babyface turn at the end of this match, but it seems like AEW is saving that for the pay-per-view, which I don't mind at all. Hopefully, they do it in a big way, with Andrade maybe even switching sides to join up with Briscoe and pals to beat down MJF and turn his back on the DCF. If we don't see him with the title from MJF, at least Andrade can get away from the DCF before Wembley. As of this moment, Andrade's story is the only thing that has me interested in this big cage match, with only AEW stars involved, at Forbidden Door, and I hope something interesting is done with him there to follow through on all of this.Written by Daisy Ruth
I will always enjoy seeing a talent who isn't usually allotted television time get a little bit of time to shine and remind people what they can do between the ropes. Tony Nese absolutely fits the bill in his match against Kenny Omega, but with that being said, it also felt like it was a bit pointless.I can understand AEW wanting to give Omega a win ahead of his Forbidden Door match against Zack Sabre Jr. in order to keep him looking strong. I don't think that win necessarily had to be a squash match, though, and could've been something a little more competitive. It came off as being lazy booking to me; that was simply meant to give Omega a win for the sake of giving him a win.I also really didn't like the post-match verbal confrontation between Omega, Sabre Jr., the rest of The Elite, and the rest of The Mighty Don't Kneel. AEW went through the trouble of flying The Mighty Don't Kneel all the way to Texas for tonight's show. If they were going to do that, then I would think that Sabre Jr. would at least have a response to what Omega said to him instead of just kind of letting the segment after that. Omega and Sabre Jr. may have history with one another from New Japan Pro-Wrestling, but at the same time, Forbidden Door is right around the corner. They don't have tons of time to build up to a match as big as the one between the two men, nor do they have much time to generate hype for it within their fanbase. I will always be an Omega girl, but I can't say I was a fan of the manner in which he was booked tonight.Written by Olivia Quinlan
Maybe it's the World Cup fever getting to me, but tournaments really are a lot of fun when done right, and AEW has got its tournaments right more often than not. That's primarily due to the level of talent the company can pull out of its ass to create a lineup where you really don't get any bad matches, and this is a prime example.Until a few weeks ago, Mercedes Mone wasn't even on TV, let alone in the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament. We were all thinking maybe Alex Windsor could have a run to the Wembley main event, or Willow Nightingale could face off with stars from Japan and Mexico in a quest to finally win the big one. So the fact that AEW has been able to parachute Mone into this tournament and have this level of match on free television is absolutely wonderful.You have to tip your cap to Hazuki in this one. Only the loyal viewers of STARDOM will have fully known what she is made of going into the June 17 episode of "AEW Dynamite," and even though she has picked up two wins on "AEW Collision," including a first-round win over Persephone, this was probably a lot of people's first impression of Hazuki. Now that the dust has settled, it's safe to say she has made a lot of new fans after tonight.What this match really benefited from was the fact that this was a show that was light on action. Only this and the multi-man main event were announced ahead of time, so unless the promo segments were going to run long, this was going to get the one thing that AEW women's TV matches always lack: time. Mone and Hazuki got time to tell a story, put each other over, and produce one hell of a match. Mone is still showing signs of being a bit unhinged in her quest to get back to the top, as well as claiming the one title that she has yet to hold, the AEW Women's World Championship. Hazuki proved that she wasn't just going to be a nice exhibition for Mone to walk over. She brought the fight to the point where even I, a jaded fan who writes about wrestling for a living, briefly thought, "Well, it is Forbidden Door season, maybe they will give it to Hazuki." That's talent.Now Mone will move on to the final to face Athena or Maya World (it will probably be Athena, let's be honest), which will be awesome. All I ask of Tony Khan is let's not make this a one-off thing, give your women's division time, and they will deliver.Written by Sam Palmer
I know I'm not the only one who was confused by the fact that instead of MJF and Mark Briscoe just announcing their teams for the Forbidden Door steel cage match tonight, we got the full 12-man tag match, just not inside a steel cage, as the "Dynamite" main event. While I liked the opening segment with the AEW World Champion and the Don Callis Family, which revealed that team's lineup, I didn't love much about the main event at all.Briscoe revealed his team right before the match got underway, which included Roderick Strong, Orange Cassidy, and Kyle O'Reilly, which made sense, as they're his Conglomeration stablemates. He then revealed Konosuke Takeshita would be part of the team, which is fine by me. I just didn't expect to see him at Forbidden Door ahead of the G1. The last person on the team is Darby Allin, which, while it makes sense, I just don't love. I'm not a fan of Allin, and I thought he'd take some more time off after losing the title to MJF at Double or Nothing. While he certainly has beef with Kevin Knight, since Knight turned heel on him at the most recent pay-per-view, I just feel like Allin's spot on Briscoe's team would have been better suited for "Speedball" Mike Bailey.O'Reilly also mentioned backstage that if anyone got disqualified in the main event, they're out of Forbidden Door. Commentary later clarified that the guy who caused the DQ would be out, then the cage match would be a five-on-six. However, it was so obvious this 12-man match was going to break down into a brawl, with dudes fighting everywhere, so that just didn't make any sense to me. Sure, nobody smashed anyone with a chair or sent anyone through a table, so I guess that kept things from getting too hardcore, but the referee's discretion thing in AEW just isn't my favorite thing. The match would have been a good, chaotic main event for "Dynamite," if it weren't the likely main event of a pay-per-view, just with a cage and more brutality added, in 11 day's time.I also don't love the teams overall, as if this is the main event of Forbidden Door, there are no competitors outside of AEW involved. I feel like that's becoming a little too common for this event, and maybe Forbidden Door would make a better TV special. Or, perhaps it needs a hiatus for a few years to make it feel fresh and new once again.Written by Daisy Ruth
With the final of the Men's Owen Hart Tournament set to pit Swerve Strickland against Will Ospreay at Forbidden Door, one year on from teaming to remove the Young Bucks as EVPs of the company, this week saw them come face-to-face to hash things out.Ospreay was out first to talk about his wedding and how he was supposed to be on his honeymoon, but Alex Windsor understood how much the tournament meant to him and encouraged him to go. He then said that he "smashed her" and hopped on the flight to come and, presumably, tell us all about his escapade and how it ties to his wrestling journey.Eventually, Strickland came out to anchor the segment and stop Ospreay from delving deeper into wherever it is his mind was headed. Things picked up from here, with Strickland outright telling Ospreay that he had changed; after all the time they spent together to bring down the Death Riders, he was now working with them and had yet to articulate why.Ospreay said he hadn't forgotten nor necessarily forgiven them, but he let go and accepted help to take that next step and become World Champion. He saw a number of guys trying to help him as the Death Riders attacked him at last year's Forbidden Door, but none of them were Strickland. He said he would have run through a brick wall for Strickland and expected the same.Strickland cut all through that and gave his own take on the history, recalling when Ospreay told him to stand back because it was Hangman Page's time to become World Champion. He asked where Page is now and said everything they did on Ospreay's word was ultimately for nothing.Now, he said, Ospreay expects him to stand back and let him become World Champion. "F*** that," he yelled, going on to say that whenever they meet in the ring, it ends up the same: Strickland beats Ospreay and his fragile neck.Then they got into a fight, and Strickland looked to use a chain before the Death Riders emerged to show how the game had changed. Or, as Strickland went on to say before leaving, Ospreay had changed.This was an essential segment to lay out the stakes and the context behind the final bout between Strickland and Ospreay. Neither man was particularly wrong from their perspective, but have grown naturally opposed due to their pursuit of the title.Of the three men leading the charge against the Death Riders, these are the only two left to fight for the title. They have taken two different paths where morality can be questioned on either side, only demonstrating how much the title, and thus this match, means to them.Written by Max Everett
