AEW: Original Forbidden Door 2024 Plans for Swerve Strickland, Mariah May on AEW’s Women’s Locker Room & Praise of Harley Cameron, More News

AEW’s Original Plans for Swerve Strickland at Forbidden Door 2024 Involved Match Against NJPW Talent

This past June’s AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2024 event in Elmont, New York featured Swerve Strickland defeating Will Ospreay to retain the AEW World Championship.

Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that AEW officials original plans for Strickland’s title defense at the event was very different than what took place.

Those spoken to within New Japan Pro Wrestling reportedly stated that the original plans were for Strickland to defend his title against Yota Tsuji. It was reported that plans for this potential match had been in the works prior to the decision for Strickland to defend his title against Ospreay instead.

It was reported that it is currently not known if this plan had ever reached Tsuji.

Tsuji ended up competing at the event in a Trios match with Titan & Hirmo Takahashi against Mistico & The Lucha Bros (Rey Fenix & Penta El Zero Miedo) for the Zero Hour pre-show.


Mariah May Comments on AEW’s Women’s Locker Room & Praise of Harley Cameron

Niko Exxtra held a recent interview with current AEW Women’s World Champion “The Glamour” Mariah May. One of the topic discussed included May’s thoughts about AEW’s women’s locker room and gave her praise of Harley Cameron.

“The girls’ locker room is very cool. If we have someone’s birthday…it’s Harley Cameron. She’ll go out and she’ll buy balloons and banners and cake. She’s very sweet. She’ll always kind of lead that charge. I think there was one time we had four birthdays in a row, so every week, there was cake, and I’m like guys, we gotta stop. We’re out there in a two-piece in two hours, and you’re having us eating cake [laughs]. But it’s a really cool group of women, and it’s very international, we’ve got girls from Japan, UK, Australia, America, Canada, it’s a lot of different people from different walks of life. But we always work together. It is crazy, wrestling is crazy, entertainment is crazy, live television is crazy. So we’re kind of all in it together, just trying to figure it out and how can we make the best of it, and everyone’s super supportive. So yeah, it’s cool.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com


AEW News & Notes

AEW recently released two new AEW Timelines videos to their official YouTube channel. The first new video was a “The Exalted One: Mr. Brodie Lee!” The second new video was a Continental Classic 2024 matches compilation.

Triller TV recently announced that they will be airing NJPW and AEW’s upcoming co-promoted Wrestle Dynasty event live on their service on January 5, 2025.

Adam Cole and Evil Uno recently released their Top 10 games list for GiantBomb.com’s annual Top 10 games lists for 2024.

Swerve Strickland recently released a new music video titled “Her Ghost” featuring Anthiny King.

AEW recently released a new video featuring Toni Storm’s visit to New York ahead of her debut appearance at the Hammerstein Ballroom for this past week’s AEW and ROH shows.

The debut trailer for upcoming comedy film Happy Gilmore 2 was recently released. This upcoming film features MJF among the cast.

In a recent interview with the Charlotte Observer, Private Party’s Isiah Kassidy gave his thoughts about Private Party’s recent AEW World Tag Team Championship victory being like a reset for AEW’s tag team division. Kassidy stated “We’re the leaders of the tag division and I want to do a fresh restart. (AEW) had the throne for the best tag-team division (in the industry), but I think it’s been forgotten about.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

AEW recently announced the full card for Friday’s AEW Rampage New Year’s Smash 2024 show on TNT:

  • Private Party (Zay & Quen) vs. mystery opponents
  • Chris Jericho vs. Anthony Bowens
  • Nick Wayne vs. HOOK
  • Thunder Rosa vs. Leila Grey