NJPW's Zack Sabre Jr. Challenges Beloved AEW Star To Match at Forbidden Door

Forbidden Door takes place Sunday, June 30th at the UBS Arena.

By Haley Miller

With just three weeks until New Japan Pro Wrestling and AEW put on their third annual Forbidden Door pay-per-view, another huge NJPW star has set out a challenged for one of AEW's beloved stars. At last year's event, Sabre Jr. went head-to-head with Orange Cassidy, Daniel Garcia and Katsuyori Shibata for the International Championship. It was their Sabre Jr. and Cassidy's time ever wrestling one another and now Sabre Jr. will have another opportunity at Cassidy.

On AEW Collision, Cassidy was defeated by Kyle O'Reilly and afterward, a promo video of Sabre Jr. was shown, claiming they have "unfinished business" with one another. Sabre Jr. made his AEW debut at the inaugural Forbidden Door event against a debuting Claudio Castagnoli. Since then, he's been part of four other matches, most recently AEW WrestleDream in October where he faced Bryan Danielson for the first time since 2009. Although Cassidy has had a rough go at things since losing the International Championship back in March to Roderick Strong. Kris Statlander and Trent Beretta -- once part of the Best Friends stable -- have both turned on the former champion, and now he's suffered a string of losses in recent weeks.

What is on the Forbidden Door 2024 Card?

AEW and NJPW aim to deliver the ultimate dream crossover matches with their yearly Forbidden Door pay-per-view. This year is arguably one of the toughest as many of NJPW's top stars have left for both AEW and WWE, but it gives them the ability to utilize relationships with other promotions. One of those is STARDOM, which is becoming a subsidiary of NJPW. The first STARDOM match was made official for Forbidden Door this week where AEW Women's World Champion Toni Storm will go up against Mina Shirakawa, Mariah May's original mentor in STARDOM, and someone she cares deeply for. 

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Another match brewing is between TBS Champion Mercedes Moné and Stephanie Vaquer, the current NJPW STRONG Women's Champion. Moné has already defeated her once before in the semi-finals of the NJPW STRONG Women's Championship tournament last May. Moné was poised to become the inaugural champion until she got injured, prompting Willow Nightingale to become champion. 

The show will also feature a dream match between two AEW stars -- AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland and International Champion Will Ospreay. Ospreay is on a hot streak in AEW with a record of 12-1 since his arrival as an official roster member in March. It's hard to imagine Strickland would lose just yet considering he's only been champion two months as of this writing, winning it back at AEW Dynasty from Samoa Joe. With Adam Copeland out on injury, it opens up an opportunity for several rising stars to win their first championship with the TNT Ladder Match. It's certainly a place where Mark Briscoe, one of the competitors, is most comfortable in, but he'll have to fend of Konosuke Takeshita the winner of Lee Moriarty vs. Dante Martin and others to secure the title.

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