MJF is a Scumbag (And That's OK)

He's Better Than You (But Do You Know It?)

One thing I want to make clear before I get into the meat of this article. If you're a seasoned wrestling fan (salt? vinegar? unclear) and are like, "Well, I think Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) sucks as a character and nothing you say is gonna convince me otherwise!" That's cool, feel free to go elsewhere on the world wide web.

But also know that this article isn't really for you to begin with.

And, more to the point, the central task of this article isn't to convince anyone their feelings are wrong about MJF. If you're like, "well I remember when MJF did X, Y, and Z and it was super offensive and gross", that's fine! You can feel however you want! For example, I still remember when he made fun of Konoske Takeshita's name by calling him "take-a-shit-ta" and this rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way, verging into racist territory, and rightfully so, not great!

Of course, Max then got absolutely annihilated in their match and barely won against someone who had only recently showed up to AEW, getting Takeshita over in the process and making him seem like a more legitimate contender in the ring.

But you know, details!

That said, that doesn't make the remark ok. Just because someone gets their comeuppance (and some may say Takeshita winning the eliminator would've been comeuppance, not just Doing Well Against The World Champ but I digress) doesn't mean that veering into racist territory is fine and dandy. I still remember that remark because it really rubbed me the wrong way, in fact a lot of stuff MJF does rubs me the wrong way. Like when he used to call out fat people in the crowd, I don't really see how that adds to what's going on in the ring or his character.

This kind of stuff just makes him seem insecure and a loser.

Oh wait.

That's another example of MJF trying to walk some tightropes when it comes to building his character. Because ultimately Max is an insecure loser, that's literally his character. There's no better example of this than when he is doing promos with his favorite on-screen opponent (and lover of Villains), Hangman Adam Page.

Just look at this short clip (or if you're a real sicko, this much longer one):

You're a joke. And the punchline is the fact these schmucks actually believe in you. If anybody deserves an apology around here it's MJF. For the lack of respect from them and from you ... but tonight I'm gonna beat it into all of you. (AEW Dynamite, 2/12/25, emphasis mine)

Max is not known to be a particularly subtle man much of the time. He makes a lot of "low-hanging fruit" jokes as it were. He criticizes people's addictions, their size, their name, the most surface level things about them. But Hangman, I think many AEW fans can agree, often brings the best out of his opponents both in the ring and on the mic, and MJF is no different. Here, Max literally goes from making fun of Hangman's alcoholism which Adam has recessed into (in kayfabe) and then does some amazing character work against Hangman, but also against himself.

Because what Max is really saying here is I'm so lonely and I wish people would love me like they love you Hangman. And look, I'm not saying it's fine art, but it is a lot more subtle than Max's typical heel work (not a high bar to clear, but we'll get to that later). And this is a constant throughout the past few years of MJF's heel work when he's actually challenged by people. Love him or hate him, you can't deny that Max has it in him for amazing character work.

It's just that he often doesn't go there for his promos, or only does it sporadically. And unfortunately, those are the promos people remember, not the, for example, amazing work-shoot promo he cut on his own damn boss, Tony Khan.

This is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the greatest work-shoot promos of all time. I did link what "work-shoot" means but if you don't care to click on the link, basically a professional wrestler drops the facade and adds a little bit of reality to their promo, whether for good or for bad. Unfortunately, and historically speaking, this has often led to disastrous consequences. But that's usually because talent and management aren't working together closely enough, or the people involved in trying to turn a work into a shoot or vice versa, just aren't very good, to be honest.

But what Max does here is a masterclass in promos. You don't have to believe me, watch how the crowd goes from openly booing, jeering, and telling Max to shut the fuck up. And then in the next 5 minute they start cheering for him, clapping for him, even chanting his name. I don't mean to make an appeal to majority here, just because the fans liked it doesn't mean it was good. But it absolutely means it resonated with thousands of people in such a way that they changed their mind on one of the biggest assholes in wrestling (who was then currently going through some controversial backstage issues) in under 10 minutes. That's impressive.

It's also just not something you see anymore. The top guys can get away with more work-shoot stuff. Swerve and Kenny Omega dipped their toes into that just last night by talking about injuries, hospital stays, Swerve's burned down home (let's not, it's a whole thing), and a few other notable moments. But, when compared to MJF's promo above, the promo feels a bit awkward and clunky at times. For example, Swerve mentions Kenny's EVP status, but Kenny had recently given that up in kayfabe, so unless Swerve is breaking kayfabe it leads to confusion. He also asks where Kenny was half the time from the last few years, and we all know he's referring to his injuries and making light of it.

But dude, Kenny was like, dying basically.

So it's weird, but I still enjoyed it.

Back to Max though!

The Hebrew Hammer Strikes Back

There's one thing about Maxwell Jacob Friedman I haven't mentioned so far, see if you can spot my omission. It's tough, but I believe in my readership.

So yeah, Max is Jewish. He's especially and proudly Jewish (not like that) and has mentioned many times that he was bullied viciously for being Jewish (which is wild because like, it's fucking New York, but prejudice sometimes just gets worse when minorities become majorities). He's told the specific story of how a group of boys called him "Jew boy" and literally hit him with bags of coins. This was told enough times that, in a well-intentioned attempt to speak on antisemitism, Juice Robinson brought out some coins during a segment with MJF. Suffice to say, it didn't land with a lot of fans who felt like the segment wasn't done quite right and questioned if it should have been done at all, even if Max was OK with it.

And that's something else too I should mention. If an average person acted like MJF did I would never be friends with them, hang out with them, much less have them as one of my favorites within one of my favorite things to watch. But because Max is playing a character on a television program, he is constantly having to talk to Tony Khan, to his co-workers, to whomever, and make sure these things get approved and his opponents are OK with whatever is said.

To be fair, there's speculation that Max has some kind of creative power, but no one in AEW, to my knowledge, has that. Maybe Max has more sway than the average AEW wrestler, but he should at this point, he's been there since day 1 and almost always elevates the product whether it's on the mic or in the ring.

But that elevation can rub some the wrong way, and here we come back to some of the low-hanging fruit that I feel like you can more easily justify.

Whether that's him insulting Mark Briscoe by invoking his sadly deceased brother Jay, bringing up Jon Moxley's real life addiction problems, or involving Bryan Danielson's children during their program in 2023.

Again, I want to stress you can feel however you want about these tactics as a heel. You can feel like it crosses the line, that it's too far, "real" heels wouldn't need to do slimy things like that to get good heat from the crowd, etc

But the fact is Max likely got approval for all of these things.

Everyone involved knows Max is in character. He's dedicating himself to being a total asshole and getting the crowd to hate him by saying deeply personal things that will resonate with things they may already know about. So I'm sorry to say, but if those things are making you uncomfortable, making you squirm, or offending you, then good. That's the entire point of being a heel in the wrestling business and Max is often the best at doing just that, whether we like it or not.

That doesn't mean you do have to like it, think it's awesome, or have it raise MJF's status in your eyes. If you think it's lame and don't want to get behind promos like that, be my guest. Personally, it almost never seriously bothers me because it has the consent of everyone involved. And sometimes I even laugh because of how ridiculously over the top dickish it is and ultimately, it's a character.

Look at how many people showed up to Max's real-life wedding, many of whom I consider to have decent real life characters themselves. Ultimately, I trust their judgement more than most fans online, I'll tell you that much.

But I know for at least some his promos can cross a line because it's "too real" or "unnecessary" and so on. That's fine, but in my estimation you're going to have a lot of problems with pro-wrestling which frequently involves what is real and tries to ask the audience what is necessary or isn't necessary.

And when Max was a babyface for a brief but controversial time, he decided it was also necessary to disclose that he had ADHD, something that made his childhood very difficult as well. That's something I can relate to as someone with ADHD too.

Now, do all of these things, just to get ahead of it, make it OK for MJF to be a total asshole and embrace the caricature of a brash white dude from New York who bullies everyone around him and acts like a total jerk to the crowd?

Well, it's complicated.

I don't think it necessarily makes it right but it certainly means MJF is coming from a privileged (dis-privileged?) place that informs his take on what his character should be. When he was a babyface, for example, he had promos about his teachers being jerks to him, bullies being anti-Semitic, his ADHD causing him personal problems and all of this made him seem a lot more human than he did.

It makes his heel character, his usual stint by a large margin, much more clear to me, ironically. This is speculative on my part but I truly believe Max is embodying those bullies, those teachers, the disbelievers, when he is in his heel persona.

He's behaving in such a way that will let you know just how much of a loser those people really are. And when I say loser I don't mean conventionally, I truly mean that people who bully others (generally I mean, it's OK to bully corporations and presidents and the powerful) are some of the biggest losers of all because they've lost some of the most important parts of being a human being. They've lost their empathy and ability to be compassionate and kind to those around them just because of surface level differences which Max constantly picks on.

Max is just showing us how insecure these people are but also how offensive they can be. And that's a difficult thing to do, especially on a week to week basis, but he does his best (worst?) to make it happen year in and year out.

And I love that for him, I think it's a worthwhile character to pursue and a great angle to bring up hard conversations amongst the fans while he still is often making himself to be the butt of the joke. That comeuppance that Max often gets in the ring and on the mic is a huge part of why it works. Because he doesn't just shit on other people but he also gets shit on, pretty badly. Consider this promo against him in New York which happened recently, or his even more squash by Brody King. I haven't even talked about one of his best feuds of all time with (another love him or hate him guy) CM Punk when they had their dog collar match where Max finally lost to Punk after cheating to beat him twice.

That comeuppance is part and parcel of why I appreciate MJF so much and will defend him despite his missteps, as a person who has also had her share of those.

As someone else who also has ADHD, was bullied as a kid (not for the same reasons but still), and deals with a lot of insecurity, his character rings true and valuable for me in a way that I think doesn't get the credit it deserves.

But Jesus, can we at least admit this guy can fucking wrestle real good?

Can we at least do that?

A Generational Talent

Alright, I'm gonna throw some stats and y'all can feel free to ignore them if you want, but I think they're worth mentioning:

1. In 2024 MJF was named the second best under 30 wrestler by ESPN
2. In 2023 he was named #1
3. In 2025 Max was named #30 in the Pro Wrestling Illustrated 500
4. In 2024 he was #7 on this same list (worth mentioning he was injured for much of the first half of 2025, which explains his fall)
5. On CageMatch, the biggest wrestling review site, MJF has a 8.73/10 (you can just round that up to a 9, if it helps) based on nearly 1000 votes. That's pretty damn high for someone whose only been in the big time for 6 years.
6. His iron man match with Bryan Danielson is widely regarded as one of the best and he's got some tough competition given the legacy of the match type.
7. He was named by Fightful Select (prominent wrestling media outlet) as best individual promo of the year, best promo of the year, and best feud.
8. That was for 2022, but for 2023 he got Men's Best Promo (again), story line of the year, and overall performer of the year. To be clear, these are votes done by the people who pay and support Fightful, not just the outlet's members.
9. He had an incredible match with Will Ospreay back in 2024 you can find here.
10. And he has way too many other awards that CageMatch has listed here.

Of course, you can dismiss all of that if you want. I'm not sure why you would since it's several different sources all saying the same thing. But luckily I don't think I'm in the minority when I say Maxwell Jacob Friedman is an incredible wrestler. If for no other reason I will always respect Max's talent, which he's had for a while now.

Even since day 1 he was always great at getting on the fans' nerves back when he used to buddy up to Cody Rhodes. And then his musical duet (yes, you read that right) with Chris Jericho was legendary, especially as Max is actually a legitimately good singer. There's a lot MJF has done, is what I'm saying.

And he's done all of this while being, if you haven't already noticed, under 30 years old. For those who don't know, often wrestlers are considered in their "prime" (when their mind and body catch up and are on par with each other) around their 30s and early 40s even. MJF has been doing all of this while well outside of his prime, seeing how he's currently, as of February 2026 only 2029 and joined AEW back in 2019. That's an incredible resume, and of course it doesn't speak to his movie resume either where he's recently been in Happy Gilmore 2.

But look, I'm not here to "glaze" Max, as the kids say. I'm not saying he's the best thing since sliced bread (sliced bread is really good, ok?) but what I am saying is that Max is exactly what he claims to be: A generational talent. I don't see many wrestlers in his position, within his age bracket, and having his kind of opportunities, constantly knock it out of the park like he does time and time again.

That doesn't mean there's no mistakes though.

Look no further than the Devil story line which is widely criticized as being convoluted, way too spaced out, sporadic in its delivery, and not exactly high class content when it did. I won't go too far into the weeds here because it's not super important, but I do think, although some bad decisions were made booking wise, I don't think it's as terrible as people made it out to be. And a lot of it was also out of Max's hands in terms of Adam Cole getting hurt, Max himself getting hurt, and a lot of creative going through many different drafts over the course of a few months.

I could also harp on about a promo here or there I found lackluster. Like his feud with Jeff Jarrett last year which some folks found, well, lacking. Some of the insults ranged from bizarre, to uncalled for, to unhelpful in building any kind of meaningful feud between the two. Jarrett himself has called it a mistake.

Overall, I consider this essay a fairly mild defense of MJF. I'm not saying he's the greatest of all time (on the mic or in the ring) but I am saying there's probably a conversation to be had for either of those things. Maybe MJF doesn't come out on top, but he should at least be mentioned amongst the greats at this point. And that's absolutely bonkers because, as I mentioned, he's not even 30 yet.

I'm also not saying he's never done anything wrong promo or in-ring wise (his Jay White match stands out) but his batting average (or whatever) is still excellent.

Most importantly, I believe there is value, strong value, in the kind of character MJF portrays for folks who have been bullied, neurodivergent folks, and Jewish folks. And, if nothing else, he's almost always great in the ring.

So yeah, he's a scumbag.

But dammit he's my scumbag.