CM Punk vs. KENTA no longer planned for Forbidden Door (Patreon)

KENTA and CM Punk are no longer facing each other at NJPW Forbidden Door, at least as this past weekend.

Fightful Select has learned that KENTA expressed to NJPW and AEW that he isn’t facing CM Punk at the Forbidden Door show, as word started to make way around Collision this past week. As of the first episode of Collision, AEW was considering who CM Punk should face at Forbidden Door, or if he’ll even be wrestling on the show.

NJPW sources had confirmed to Fightful that KENTA and CM Punk had been planned for the event, but as of this weekend, it wasn’t happening. We weren’t given a reason as to why, but were told that by the time KENTA had tweeted "Kenta vs Punk is never going to happen" that was in response to him actually being out of the match.

Based on what we've heard, Punk was open to the match and there were other options being evaluated for him as of Saturday. When Fightful spoke with NJPW sources about KENTA, they confirmed that most top NJPW talent were booked for other opponents, though not officially announced.

We're told that there were big AEW programming plans for KENTA to set up the program. Satoshi Kohima, El Phantasmo and Jeff Cobb have all been pitched internally, as well as simply having Punk be a part of the broadcast as an announcer. There were adjustments made to AEW programming this week, as Ibou from WrestlePurists highlighted on Twitter.

CM Punk is backstage at AEW Dynamite and is planned for the show, as we'd reported this past weekend. To clear up confusion, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega were never planned for the show, and there pre-tapes were done well before Collision -- it wasn't reactionary based on the Collision promo.