He was just like his country, young, scrappy, and hungry, but Maxwell Jacob Friedman seems to have thrown away his shot.
With the necessary reference to another staged spectacle out of the way, let’s keep things simple: MJF and “Hangman” Adam Page’s opening promo on Wednesday’s episode of “AEW Dynamite” was an interesting start to the show. This is not the first time I’ve criticized MJF for his rapidly degrading promo performances, but as long as he continues to drop the ball when he’s put on the mic, I will continue to do so.
I will say this: this promo war’s basic progression was good (maybe even great), and, at the end of the day, this segment did what it needed to do. MJF walked in to Wednesday’s opening segment thinking he was going to trick Page into giving him an AEW World Championship opportunity without using up his Casino Gauntlet Match Contract title match rights, and he walked out of that promo battle sufficiently goaded into using his contract for a match at Forbidden Door. Having Page get an intellectual one-up on the typically wily, conniving MJF was fun, but it was exactly MJF’s wily, conniving nature that made this promo almost unbearable to listen to.
When philosophy is appropriately added to a wrestling promo, it’s awesome. There is nothing more fun than being prompted to dig deeper into this medium — that’s why terms like “in-ring psychology,” “mind games,” and “mentality” get thrown around as compliments in this sphere. However, clarity is everything. There is nothing more mind-numbing than trying to follow an “intellectual” promo that does not make a lick of sense. When I was listening to MJF’s promo — when I was listening to his tirades about accepting his devilish nicknames, and about how morality is contingent on perception — I felt my eyes glaze over in real time. He was saying so much, but meaning so little.
I understood everything MJF was saying in a vacuum, about how the identities of “good” and “evil” are a social construct, about how that devalues Page’s reign, but MJF delivered it carelessly, without the finesse he’s known for. Sure, he’s just ragebaiting, but you can ragebait and have a semi-cohesive argument; in fact, if he had threaded together his words with any more care, this would have been an absolute home run of a segment. He just lacked the sophistication that he used to have during the height of his career, and as the segment went on and on and on, it became clear that MJF, as he exists right now, no longer has the verbal chops that have carried him throughout his early AEW career.
I’m sure their match at Forbidden Door will be a decent one (as disappointing as it is to have another AEW vs. AEW match at the AEW/NJPW collab event). However, MJF threw away his shot on Wednesday. He threw away his contract, and he threw away his chance to redeem himself from his recent collection of abysmal promos.
Written by Angeline Phu
