Backstage News On Jon Moxley's Original AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door Plans

Jon Moxley was able to walk away from the AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door event as the interim AEW World Champion, but he was originally slated to be in the opening match of the show according to Dave Meltzer of the "Wrestling Observer Radio."

The PPV ended up being an injury-bit one with a lot of top stars having to be taken off the card due to a variety of problems that both AEW and New Japan Pro Wrestling are dealing with. One of the biggest blows came to CM Punk, who was originally going to main event the show against Hiroshi Tanahashi for the AEW World Championship which he had recently won from Hangman Page.

Unfortunately, Punk suffered an injury that forced him off the show, and that led to Tony Khan changing the main event to be for an interim AEW World Championship after he opted not to vacate the title from Punk. Tanahashi remained in that match, and the AEW President put Moxley in against him, which was a match the former WWE Superstar ended up winning.

However, had the original plans happened, Moxley was slated to be in the opening match, which was the six-man tag team bout that saw Shota Umino, Wheeler Yuta, and Eddie Kingston face Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, and Minoru Suzuki. It is unknown whether he would have replaced either Yuta or Kingston in this one, or if the idea was for this to be an eight-man tag, but the plan was to have Moxley team with Umino, who has been his protege.

That wasn't the only major match that was altered for the Forbidden Door event though, as Bryan Danielson was originally going to face Zack Sabre Jr, but due to the Blackpool Combat star being hurt, this opened up the chance for AEW to debut Claudio Castagnoli. The All-Atlantic Championship fatal four-way match also had to be changed at the last minute due to Tomohiro Ishii being hurt, as he was replaced by Clark Connors.