Former WWE Name Behind New AEW Match Type

With AEW Forbidden Door including a new match type, a former WWE name has been revealed as the individual who came up with the idea.

On June 28, AEW Forbidden Door saw Team Briscoe (Mark Briscoe, Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy, Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly, & Konosuke Takeshita) defeat Team DCMJF (MJF, Kevin Knight, Kyle Fletcher, Jake Doyle, Kazuchika Okada, and Andrade El Ídolo) in a match that Dave Meltzer would award five stars.

The match was no ordinary multi-man encounter, being contested in a circular cage christened ‘Death’s Door’, with AEW later filing a trademark application for that very term.

Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Meltzer would confirm that former WWE Vice President of Global Television, Mike Mansury, was behind the idea, writing:

“The new round steel cage that was used in the Death’s Door 12-man tag team match at AEW Forbidden Door was the idea of Mike Mansury.”

Mansury worked for WWE from 2009 until he resigned from his role in 2020 and would head to AEW two years later, signing as Senior Vice President & Co-Executive Producer.

Shortly after signing with the company, Mansury’s influence would be seen when AEW Dynamite saw a new look to its presentation.

Death Comes Knocking On The AEW Door

The recent cage match isn’t the first time that the very final sounding word has come to AEW, with Jon Moxley’s Death Riders being the most obvious use in the current product.

Previously, PAC and The Lucha Brothers teamed together as Death Triangle, eventually disbanding when Penta El Zero Miedo & Rey Fenix parted ways with AEW, heading to WWE. As for PAC, he would join Moxley’s Death Riders.

There’s little doubt, given the imposing and bespoke nature of the steel structure, that the Death’s Door will be seen again and it seems like the ideal thing to bring out at top AEW pay-per-views, invoking the same sense of anticipation that Hell in a Cell or Elimination Chamber garners over in WWE.

Opportunity also exists to tie the Death’s Door concept to a particular star (or group, thereof), in a similar way to how Hell in a Cell was closely associated with The Undertaker long before it became the name of a PLE. The match continues to be used outside of that particular event, with Oba Femi set to face Brock Lesnar in the structure at SummerSlam in August.

Something brutal would be fitting of Death Riders, particularly as a way for Moxley to test the mettle of anyone that crosses their path, although the same could be said of both Mark Briscoe and Darby Allin, two stars who have demonstrated a fine line in brutality during their respective runs.

Wherever Death’s Door next appears, it’s bound to be a spectacle, and one best saved for pay-per-view glory.

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