If you ask Jim Ross, two matches from AEW & NJPW: The Forbidden Door 2 will live forever.
On the latest installment of his “Grilling J.R.” podcast, “Good Ole’ J.R.” spoke at length about The Forbidden Door 2 premium live event and how he feels two matches will live forever from the show — Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay and Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada.
“Omega is something else,” Ross said. “I didn’t see as much of Kenny until I started working for Access TV back in the day and doing their NJPW matches. You know, he was kinda off the radar, right? You know, his name was out there. But knowing his work was not as familiar with everybody as it is today. But when I met him, I was surprised that he wasn’t bigger than he was. Because he looks, he wrestles bigger than he is. Yeah. If that makes any sense. He wrestles bigger than he actually is, and, I found him to be extremely intelligent, very respectful, and a classic kid. And he’s become one of my better friends in the whole company. And I think the world of him is so good dude, the match was unbelievable. You kept wondering, okay, where are you going now? Where are you going? It’s like having a set of spots, and you get through ’em, and you exhale, and now we gotta do a little restart or kick it back. Hit the restart button. Those guys rarely kicked the restart button. It was a seamless progression of never-ending movement and physicality.”
Ross continued, “I thought it was just absolutely phenomenal. And it was something that wrestlers, veteran wrestlers, wrestlers that wrestled on big shows this weekend, like in like WWE show, there’s not anybody on that card that can’t learn something from watching Kenny Omega at Forbidden Door. They’re just not; we all can learn something. The announcers, myself, and all of us could learn things by watching another guy tell his story. Because it depends on what our job description is; it is our responsibility to tell the story, especially as an announcer, to understand what this talent’s trying to state. Pay close attention and tell his story or her story as it may be. So I don’t know. I can’t remember Conrad and all the years I’ve been doing this, watching two matches on the same show. As good as the matches involving Brian Danielson and Kenny Omega at Forbidden Door. They’re absolute classics and will live forever, as long as wrestling’s in an audio vehicle. Those two matches are never gonna die.”
Check out more from the show via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to WrestlingHeadlines.com for transcribing the above quotes.
