"Political reasons" could prevent big AEW stars from wrestling at upcoming event - Reports

An upcoming major AEW event is set to include stars from multiple promotions. However, top stars may not be on the show due to "political reasons."

AEW Forbidden Door is the company's annual event, which usually features stars from Tony Khan's promotion and NJPW. This has led to many dream matches over the years, featuring top stars from both promotions. However, this year, All Elite Wrestling is taking things up a notch by including STARDOM and CMLL as well.

CMLL has recently partnered with Tony's promotion, and their stars have wrestled on Dynamite and Collision. However, there were reports that, as part of this partnership, AAA stars would not be present on shows where CMLL stars were performing. With this year's Forbidden Door set to include CMLL, this means that AAA stars could miss out on one of the company's biggest PPVs.

Speaking on the Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer mentioned that due to "political reasons," several AAA stars such as Rush, Pentagon, and Rey Fenix could be absent from Forbidden Door.

“We’re getting STARDOM for sure, and I think we’re getting CMLL. The problem with CMLL is that Rush and Pentagon and Fenix and Komander, who we haven’t seen much lately, all of them wouldn’t be able to be at the show for political reasons.” [H/T: Bodyslam]

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AEW President Tony Khan criticized for dropping the ball with Swerve Strickland as World Champion

Swerve Strickland finally realized his dream of being World Champion at AEW Dynasty when he beat Samoa Joe for the title. The following week on Dynamite, he competed against Kyle Fletcher in a random World Title Eliminator match.

Speaking on his Keepin' It 100 podcast, Konnan criticized the way Swerve has been booked as World Champion.

"I think they dropped the ball with Swerve the first night when he won the championship and his appearance on the very next show was just a random match against Kyle Fletcher. No promo, no nothing. It just shows, like bro, Tony has no clue how to build stars. Okay, he gives a guy the big win but like you need to move up the card, and like every company has issues with this, with building stars."

Check out the video below:

It remains to be seen if Swerve Strickland's booking as AEW World Champion will improve moving forward.