12 Ups & 0 Downs From AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door
5. A Fireworks Show With An Emphasis On FIRE
Give Shota Umino his flowers today.
Once tipped as a future New Japan Pro Wrestling megastar, the young protege suffered greatly in the pandemic. Stranded in the United Kingdom, where he was on excursion pre-COVID, Jon Moxley's young violent son lost his conditioning and charisma in return appearances for RevPro, looking a husk of the bright-eyed prospect he looked before the break. It took a long, long time for him to relight the fire, too, with even his 16 April Windy City Riot showing opposite Jay White suggesting Umino had much work to do to regain ground lost to fellow NJPW prodigies Yuya Uemura, Ren Narita, and more.
At Forbidden Door, Umino was the standard performer in a match featuring Minoru Suzuki, Chris Jericho, and Eddie Kingston. The 25-year-old was incredible here. Riding the lighting from start to finish, he was an intense, pulse-pounding, Hiroshi Tanahashi-like presence, with his late-match flurries and defiant last stand enough to put arm hairs on end.
Umino was ultimately felled, giving the Jericho Appreciation Society Blood and Guys advantage for Wednesday. Overall, it was a bruising, attritional twist on the show-opening bomb-fest format, sacrificing nothing in intensity while delivering on all the huge, poppable moments AEW likes to pull out in this spot.