AEW and New Japan Pro Wrestling have had a strong working relationship for over five years at the time of writing, to the point where the AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door pay-per-view has become a staple of the wrestling calendar and has been held in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. However, things didn’t start out that way.
Initially, there was no relationship between the two companies as NJPW management wasn’t happy with The Elite leaving in 2019, as well as former NJPW President Harold Meij not seeing any upside in working with AEW since the company was already partnered with CMLL and ROH. However, according to Dave Meltzer on “Wrestling Observer Radio,” one man was pivotal to the AEW and NJPW relationship becoming a reality, and that man was Jon Moxley.
“Jon’s the one responsible for the New Japan and AEW relationship back during the pandemic,” Meltzer said. “Jon had the [IWGP] US title and he was an AEW guy…there was no relationship at all. it opened up the relationship. That’s when KENTA came to AEW and it opened the door. They basically built a relationship after that point.”
Moxley actually won the IWGP United States Championship in his debut match for NJPW, a match that took place less than two weeks after his AEW debut. However, while he was initially stripped of the title due to travel complications that forced him out of a title defense in October 2019, he wasn’t stripped of the title when he won it back in January 2020 and couldn’t make it back over to Japan throughout that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chris Jericho also competed in NJPW as the AEW World Champion no less, though that would be Jericho’s final official match for NJPW and hasn’t returned to the company since.
Please credit “Wrestling Observer Radio” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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