Welcome back to another Monday Morning Q&A where I toss out some questions to get a feel of how you guys and gals are feeling about certain topics.
So here are 5 questions I’d like to toss out for this week. I’ll give my answers, too, but the key here is that I want to know what YOU think! So make sure you chime in!
1) Which company do you think came out of Forbidden Door looking better, All Elite Wrestling or New Japan Pro Wrestling?
Thankfully, I think both came out pretty even. Although New Japan only had three real wins (Chaos in the opener, Will Ospreay and Jay White) I didn’t feel like they were being shafted. All of their guys, minus the Dojo foursome and Clark Connors, to an extent, were booked to be on par with the AEW wrestlers. Even though Zack Sabre Jr lost, for instance, he was fighting an uphill battle against the surprise replacement mystery opponent, and there was no chance Hiroshi Tanahashi would have won the interim title, but he gave Jon Moxley a great fight.
You could argue AEW could have lost something like the Suzuki-gun match or whatever, but I don’t think people are going to leave this feeling like there was a one-sided booking. This isn’t Raw beating SmackDown in every match at Survivor Series or anything.
2) Do you think there will be a Forbidden Door 2023? If so, what matches are you hoping will take place?
Even with all the injuries plaguing the card, this still ended up being a damn good event. If the buy rate was good, I fully expect to see another event next year.
Assuming that does happen, I want to see CM Punk against KENTA, Bryan Danielson against Zack Sabre Jr (if we don’t get it sooner), a full Bullet Club versus Elite match in some fashion, and I’d really like to see a Survivor Series elimination style match. To the best of my recollection, we haven’t even seen that style tag team match in AEW, correct? It would be cool to see “Team AEW vs. Team NJPW” with some of the big names all thrown in and for it to not be a regular one-fall finish. That could be a good way to incorporate names like maybe Wardlow winning for Team AEW.
3) With Forbidden Door out of the way and Money in the Bank on the horizon, which do you think will end up having been the better show?
Without a doubt, Forbidden Door won’t be outclassed by Money in the Bank. As much as those ladder matches have potential to be fun, the rest of the card is going to fall short, and those two matches still might not even be fantastic.
WWE just doesn’t try anymore. They phone it in all across the board. You either have your Peacock subscription because it’s “just $5-10 a month, whatever” and you’re not going to unsub and they know it, or you’re someone who isn’t likely going to sub for this month based on the event as you’re already a lapsed fan.
I’m more excited to see what WWE does as a result of Money in the Bank, rather than what will happen at the event itself. Even then, I think it’ll be a disaster, and I’m curious what mess they’ll dig themselves into. But Forbidden Door was a ton of fun and as great as some of the performers are in WWE, I just don’t think they’ll have the same passion to match or surpass that.
And funny enough, I think if you hooked a lie detector up to the WWE roster, they’d say the same thing—that they won’t top Forbidden Door.
4) Who do you think will be the remaining Superstars to qualify for the Men’s Money in the Bank ladder match?
Are they going with 7 or 8 per match? Previous graphics indicated 7, but they’ve had 8 the past few years.
If it is 8, we’re missing 3 men. We have two from Raw and 3 from SmackDown, so that means at least one more from Raw, most likely.
I’d love to say Ciampa would have a shot, but they seem hell bent on not having him be a big deal. Damian Priest could get in here, or Finn Balor. Kevin Owens is always someone to watch out for, and I don’t think they’d pick Ezekiel over him, but that’s a possibility, too. Despite his dominance, I don’t think we’ll get Veer Mahaan in here. They’ll want to keep him away from Omos and away from a loss, and he wouldn’t win the briefcase.
Riddle still has a chance to make it into the match in a last chance scenario. Don’t count him out. The Miz hasn’t had a chance to qualify, but keeps talking about how he’s going to win it. That’s strange. In another company, I would think a script supervisor would make sure that didn’t go nowhere, but in WWE, I can fully expect them to just drop that ball and hope that we all forget about it. But maybe, we get The Miz against Riddle or even Mustafa Ali for a possible spot.
On the SmackDown side, if we get at least one more person from the blue brand, the main person who stands out to me is Madcap Moss. I’m surprised they didn’t have him against Happy Corbin for a qualifier. Even though they’ve had their “last laugh”, maybe they will just ignore that, do it again, and Pat McAfee will interfere to cost Corbin the match. If not, the same scenario could happen with someone else beating Corbin, but there aren’t any babyfaces that fit that bill to me on SmackDown right now.
My ultimate guess is we get Riddle, Moss and, if there’s an eighth, that’ll be Owens or The Miz.
5) Who do you think will be the remaining Superstars to qualify for the Women’s Money in the Bank ladder match?
If we’ve got 8 women participating, we’re missing two. One of those is definitely Becky Lynch, and I would assume if this is just 7, she’s the only missing piece of the puzzle. They’ll do some “last chance” thing or whatever on Raw to get her the spot.
Assuming there’s another spot open, though, that would likely indicate someone else from SmackDown, too (4 for Raw, 4 for SmackDown). From that group, we’re not working with much left, as Natalya and Ronda Rousey are busy, Naomi’s not there, and the rest have lost qualifiers. Either they’d go with another last chance thing and give it to Xia Li or Shayna Baszler, or we’ve got Aliyah (despite how they had Tamina replace her, which likely indicates Aliyah is injured or something), or there’s a surprise return from Charlotte Flair.
I’d lean much more toward Lynch and, if there’s more, Flair, than for it to be Li, Baszler or another.
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
