During a new interview with Newsday, MJF commented on an encounter with an angry fan at an indie event, being inspired by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On encountering a fan with a knife by his keyed car after an indie show: “I drop my bag, I look at him, I put my key between my ring finger and my middle finger and I ask him if we’re going to do this. And like a complete … loser, he dropped his head down and just ran away.”
On first encountering wrestling at five years old: “I had never seen it before. And I don’t remember who it was, but I looked at my dad. I was like, ‘I need more of this. I need more of this immediately.’”
On his first full match being Mankind and Undertaker’s Hell in a Cell match: “I was immediately hooked. And then I just started digging deeper, you go on YouTube, you search the catalogs. I found this guy whose feet were up on the desk, he was chomping on gum real loud, you could tell he was talking to someone that was his boss but he didn’t seem to care … Once I saw Roddy Piper I knew exactly what I was going to be doing when I grew up.”
On his first ‘promo class’ at a wrestling school: “The first day, when we were done rolling around we had what was they call ‘promo class,’ which to me is just talking. And I went up there after six other guys went up there, and they were bumbling and fumbling, and their hands were shaking and saying, ‘When I see you on Friday I’m going to give you a whuppin’. It was brutal. And then I went up there, I did my thing, and I’ll never forget, my trainer looked at me, and said, ‘Huh, all right, we’re about to print some money,’ and that was that.”
On his persona and some fans loving him: “I look at it like this: I’m being myself, everybody else in my industry is faking it. There’s nothing fake about me. And I think there are some people that appreciate that. Even if they hate me, they appreciate the fact that I’m 100 percent authentically me.”
