10 Things Nobody Has Told You About Wrestling Yet
4. Inter-Promotional Feuds Rarely Work
Every time there's a mere hint of one wrestling company collaborating with another, some are hell-bent on manifesting a long-term inter-promotional war, and while it's part of the fun of fandom, it rarely actually happens because it rarely works.
The ROH Vs. CZW feud worked perfectly - and was plotted so intricately that it was even better than the premise - because both promotions boasted a distinct philosophy. ROH was the pure league that upheld the rules as a sacred tenet; CZW the ultra-violent atrocity that wore its outlaw mud-show stigma with pride. The NJPW Vs. UWFi feud worked in contrast because both promotions aspired to the same ideal of legitimacy and were competing to determine who best embodied it.
The build to Forbidden Door was as poor as the show itself was great, but Tony Khan and Gedo didn't book an inter-promotional rivalry because it would have made no sense: how could AEW present a united front when its biggest heel faction hates what the promotion embodies?
AEW and NJPW's stable-based framework hardly makes such a narrative credible, and the same was true when Kenny Omega first revealed he was in cahoots with Don Callis.