MJF – “I’m Not Supposed To Be This Good At 27”
The AEW World Champion MJF is reflecting on his career so far while commenting that he’s not supposed to be this talented at his current age.
Ever since All Elite Wrestling started in 2019, it was pretty obvious that Maxwell Jacob Friedman was a star on the rise who would be a future World Champion in the company.
MJF became the AEW World Champion last November at Full Gear 2022. Since then, MJF has done everything he could to prove that not only does he deserve his spot at the top of the card, but he wants to prove doubters wrong too.
At the AEW All In London 2023 pay-per-view on Sunday, MJF retained the AEW World Title over his “best friend” Adam Cole in a competitive match with Max winning with an inside cradle. Earlier in the night during the Zero Hour pre-show, MJF & Cole won the ROH Tag Team Titles from Aussie Open.
In an interview with Dave LaGreca for Busted Open prior to AEW All In London, MJF spoke about proving doubters wrong earlier this year when he had an incredible Match of the Year contender with Bryan Danielson in a 65-minute Iron Man Match that saw Max retain the AEW World Title.
“‘Sure, MJF might have beaten Jon Moxley for the world title. But he can’t wrestle for an hour against Bryan Danielson.’ I’ll never forget… of all the takes, that was the one that made me the most mad.”
“There’s a weird thing that has occurred in professional wrestling where 99% of the time, if somebody’s really good at this, they’re just okay in the ring. Because people rest on their laurels. They realize they can make just enough money and be just enough over by just being good on the microphone, so why put just as much time and effort into this as they do inside the squared circle? I don’t rest on my laurels. I’m a sicko. It’s not how I operate. I wasn’t raised that way.”
“I was raised to be able to look people in the eye and say, ‘I’m better than you, and you know it,’ and mean it. So when I read that, I thought, ‘This is my favorite goalpost moment. Because not only am I going to prove I can go an hour with Bryan Danielson. Not only am I going to have the best Iron Man match in the history of the sport. I am going to make everyone go, ‘Can Bryan Danielson hang with MJF?’ Guess what the answer was? Nope. I won.”
MJF Believes He Scares People Because Of How Good He Is
The AEW World Champion MJF would go on to say that people are looking at him from a different perspective now.
“Because people aren’t used to watching history unfold in front of their very own eyes. It’s scary. I’m scary. I scare people. I’m not supposed to be able to be this good at 27. It’s weird. It’s never happened before in the history of the sport. Now there have been guys that have gotten huge opportunities at my age. But everybody knew that they had holes in their game. I’m not going to name names.”
“You can think of these people, where they got a lot of TV time and you went, ‘Oh, this guy is next up, but he needs to work on this, or he needs to work on that.’ I don’t need to work on jack shit, bro. I’m MJF. I’m the best in the world right now by, in my opinion, a wide margin. I think that’s why. I think it’s slowed down a tremendous amount.”
“I think people finally have taken a step back and been like, ‘Alright, he talks a lot of s**t, he cuts some corners, he’s kind of a scumbag, but he’s my scumbag.’ I think now, fans are excited to be along for the ride, as opposed to being contrarians, as opposed to going, ‘Everyone’s talking about how great this guy is, I’m sick of it. I don’t want to hear it anymore.’ Now, it’s ‘Alright, he’s pretty f**king good.'”
At the AEW All In London post-show press conference, MJF expressed a desire to bring AEW shows to Mexico while AEW’s Owner Tony Khan also seemed open to the idea.