During a recent interview with Yahoo Sports, AEW Superstar MJF commented on AEW challenging WWE RAW in the ratings department after being on television for less than two years, the high praise he receives, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On people saying that he’s a great talent for his age: “It is a constant chip on my shoulder because people like to say ‘He’s great for 25. Deep down I know that that means. It’s a crutch. Realistically, if I came into this industry and I was 30, or whatever age people deemed ‘normal,’ they’d be saying I was great or even the best. But because of the fact that I am 25, because of ageism, you don’t hear that.”
On his old school approach to wrestling and not being a fan of the high-flying style of his fellow AEW stars: “When I first got into the industry, I was already a student of the game. I enjoyed watching the [Nick] Bockwinkels, the [Ric] Flairs, the Tullys [Blanchard] — who I now get to work with every week — do their thing. The smartest thing about them, contrary to what you see now stylistically in professional wrestling, was that they didn’t want to get hit, they didn’t want to mess their bodies up. When I watch professional wrestling on AEW Dynamite, I cringe, I want to puke in my mouth a little bit, because I see these guys and they are murdering themselves. They are jumping from the top rope to the floor, they are doing the loopy loops, the twisty turns, the flippity do-das, and they are killing themselves. Some of these people who are younger than me, and I’m already wildly young, might not be able to walk anymore when they get to my age.”
On playing a great heel: “I genuinely feel that people hating me as much as they say they do, it’s intriguing. If people hate me so much, why is it that week after week, I have the highest rated segments in my company? It’s because that hate that they have deep down inside, it’s guttural, it’s visceral, they want to see somebody hurt me or shut me up.”
On AEW challenging RAW in the ratings: “There has not been a wrestling show that has been able to even sniff ‘Monday Night Raw’ in decades. We’re creeping up every single week in that key demo. If I’m not mistaken, I believe we beat them a few weeks at points on their show in the key demo, which is absolutely insane because we have only been a professional wrestling company on television for a year and a half, two years. It’s unheard of and I’m proud to be a part of it.”
