Cageside Community Star Ratings for AEW x NJPW: Forbidden Door

After every WWE - and now AEW - PPV, we ask you all to rank each match on the show using the star rating system made famous by Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer.

The results are in AEW and New Japan’s first-ever joint show, Forbidden Door. Here’s how our little corner of the wrestle web graded what happened in the ring on June 26 in Chicago - and how our subjective grades compare to Meltzer’s.

Many have asked “why Dave?”, which to me is fairly obvious. Love, hate, or don’t care about him, the Observer Star Rating is the proverbial industry standard. No one else’s are tracked by Wikipedia and other web outlets. You can’t place online bets on what grades other pundits will give big matches.

But in order to not make this all about Meltz, we added another fan-voted rating to the mix - this one from Cagematch. That site uses a ten point scale, so we’ve halved their ratings for ease of comparison.

Here’s what that all looks like:

The rule of thumb is that being within half a star of Dave (or anyone else’s) rating signals general agreement. For the most part, these scores show everyone generally agrees Forbidden Door did what we were all expecting it to do — deliver good wrestling matches.

Setting aside The Buy-In, the Observer was higher on the show than either of the user-voting systems. The only big differences came from the IWGP World title 4Way, and the trios match in service of the Chris Jericho/Eddie Kingston feud. Will Ospreay & Orange Cassidy’s IWGP United States championship match, which won our “Match of the Night” poll immediately after the show ended, received the best score from everyone.

Overall, our ratings for the entire card averaged out to a 3.68, the Observer’s a 3.92, and Cagematch’s a 3.64. That made Forbidden Door Dave’s highest rated AEW show of the year. It was second for us and Cagematch, behind Revolution.

Do Cageside’s Community Ratings match up with your personal ones? Any final thoughts on Forbidden Door?