AEW Forbidden Door 2026 Results: Live Recap from San Jose

Fight Game Media is live on the ground at the SAP Center in San Jose, California for AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2026 — the fifth annual crossover spectacular, and co-promoted by all four partners: AEW, NJPW, CMLL, and STARDOM. Tonight's stacked card features five championship matches, the finals of both Owen Hart Foundation Tournaments, and one of the most anticipated match-ups in years.

The confirmed card includes: a 12-Man Steel Cage Match (Team DCMJF vs. Team Briscoe); Owen Hart Men's Final (Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland); Owen Hart Women's Final (Mercedes Moné vs. Maya World); AEW Women's World Championship (Thekla vs. Starlight Kid); AEW Continental Championship (Jon Moxley vs. Bandido); IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship (Shota Umino vs. PAC); AEW World Tag Team Championship (Adam Copeland & Christian Cage vs. The Dogs); Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr.; and a 3-Way Tag Match (El Sky Team vs. Young Bucks vs. Shingo Takagi & Titán).

Watch our full post-show breakdown above, and follow along below for live results all night.

This won't necessarily be a blow-by-blow recap of the live show. It will more or less give you a live view of the show with thoughts from myself, and possibly Jeremy Finestone. I'm going to be using my iPhone, so don't expect eloquent sentences. Hopefully you'll feel closer to the live action though.

We'll be back when the live show and the buy-in matches begin.

Drilla Maloney and Daniel Garcia opened the pre-show. I think it was announced shortly before the show on Twitter. All for more Forbidden Door matches. 

Crowd is into Garcia as a heel and we even got a short “Let’s go Drilla,” chant. 

Nice win by Drilla with the Drilla Killa. 

I asked Big Dave Meltzer how many people should be in the building today and he said maybe 9,500. I was hoping for 10,000. 

Maika beat Skye Blue in a solid match to qualify for the last spot in Survival of the Fittest for Wednesday. Crowd was into it. Blue was still either a second too early or a second too late on certain things. But she didn’t hurt it from being solid. 

The last of the pre-show matches was the Divine Dominion against Thunder Rosa and Olympia. 

Divine Dominion have such a bad ass look to them. 

I thought the match was going to be more of a squash but it turned out to be quite competitive. The goal seemed to be to get Olympia over with this live crowd. She had an impressive press slam on Bayne. The crowd was into Olympia. Thunder Rosa was off near the end of the match and but took the pin at the end. 

Not sure how long San Jose will be this hot, but they were ready for the pre-show. 

Bucks vs Sky Team vs Shingo and Titan opened and as you can imagine, the crowd was on fire for it. I think it was a tick under what I’d hoped, mostly because they weren’t always on the same page. But there was a high degree of difficulty in what they were doing. 

But, it didn’t matter to the live crowd. They were here to see a true All-Star match. Bucks won with the Meltzer Driver or whatever it’s called now over Titan. 

And yes, there were people singing Me Muero, though I wanted slightly more pageantry than we got. 

Kenny Omega and Zack Sabre Jr. was as good or better than advertised. After starting with the party match, Omega and ZSJ put on a match reminiscent of a G1 style match from the late 2010s. 

ZSJ would figure out transitions out of the One-Winged Angel and Omega would have to sell a body part. He sold his arm several times and when he thought he had the match won, ZSJ would transition out into another submission. ZSJ is such a great heel and the crowd was putty in his hands. Omega finally muscled out of an arm bar and turned it into a powerbomb, hit a V-Trigger, and then won with the One-Winged Angel. 

Jon Moxley and Bandido had a really good match. Mox beat the hell out of him for the first half and the size difference was way more than I realized. But they they used it to their advantage and Bandido got the advantage. He did his falling slam from the top rope on Mox which was incredible live. He went for the 21-Plex and slipped over Mox and then to was on the apron. Mox put on the rear naked choke and held it and put all of his weight into Bandido. Bandido finally fell back which only allowed Mox to sink the choke in tighter to get the tap. 

I went to find food and it kind of took forever in addition to there being very little to choose from. So I missed most of Shota Umino and PAC, though I did see the finish. 

Jeremy said it was fine for what it, but a little underwhelming. Shota beat him with the Second Chapter. 

Moxley and Marina came out to tend to PAC. Then Mox sized up Umino who stared him down. Hiroshi Tanahashi came out and out the belt on Umino and Mox powdered out of the ring. 

Thekla and Starlight Kid is next. Thekla has everything, except size, and I think when she finally turns babyface, it will work for her. She had a rockstar entrance. 

Starlight Kid is an awesome babyface and really the perfect adversary. The crowd was with them for just about the entire time. Starlight Kid had Thekla in a submission and used her foot to disallow Thekla from touching the bottom rope to break the submission. Later in the match, Thekla hit a spear and then two stomps to win the match. 

Earlier in the match, she went after Stardom president Taro Okada who was in the front row. After the match, she snatched Starlight Kid’s mask and hit Okada with it. 

Cope and Christian against The Dogs was a long-ish match but more about a surprise than anything else. And it was very well done.

Right before the match started, I asked Dave Meltzer if he heard about any surprises on this show and he said no.

Welp. 

The match was set up for a Cope hot tag. Christian was in the ring forever. Finally, Cope made the tag and ran wild, but didn’t get the pin. Then, David Finley went shillelagh crazy on both Christian and then Cope until the lights went out. The Gunn Club was on the ramp with a spotlight on them. And when the lights went back on, a returning Jay White was in the ring and hit the Blade Runner on Finley. Copeland pinned him to keep the titles.

There was a great match inside Mercedes vs. Maya World but I don’t think the crowd had enough history with Maya to make it work completely. They had the crowd with them at some points. At others, the crowd was there to go along with the story, but wasn’t truly convinced she could win. 

There was a great spot late where Mercedes had her in the Bank Statement and the crowd desperately wanted her to grab the rope. Mercedes tapped her out soon-thereafter. 

The cage match featured a lot of what I like from AEW and stuff I don’t care for at all. Each member of the babyface team had a backpack which allowed them to bring items into the ring. Darby’s had tacks. Kyle O’Reilly’s had a Nintendo Entertainment System in it and he used it as a weapon. It was way too cute. Darby took tacks to the face by the way.

They did get away from a lot of the silliness and there was good wrestling inside the cage. There was a funny moment with Lio Rush inside a bag and he did some great spots with the heels but ultimately they zipped him back up. 

Kevin Knight climbed to the top of the cage to grab Darby’s back pack and it exploded on him and he fell from the top through a table. 

MJF tried to boss Andrade around one too many times and ate a spinning back elbow. He took off his Don Callis and MJF shirt and underneath was a shirt that used their names in a mean way. Mark Briscoe hit the Jay Driller on Jake Doyle to win the match. 

In the end, Will Ospreay and Swerve beat the living hell out of each other. They both bled like crazy and the feeling by the end is that they were crazy exhausted. They hit every move imaginable except for Swerve couldn’t hit the Vertebreaker. 

The Death Riders came ringside to cheer Will on. Swerve hit the House Call which turned Will’s head. But he looked right at the Death Riders and fired up like Hulk Hogan in his prime. He finished him with the Tiger Driver ‘91. Crowd was on fire for the majority of the match, especially the last five minutes.