Pillars: The Genius of MJF

All Elite Wrestling was about two seconds old when Maxwell Jacob Friedman decided he was going to be the scum of the earth.

MJF was in the first match in AEW history, wrestling in the inaugural Casino Battle Royale at 2019’s Double or Nothing event. As soon as the bell rang, MJF ran to the corner to stomp out Dustin Thomas, an inspiring wrestler who happened to be a bilateral amputee — and whom MJF promptly referred to as “Lieutenant Dan.”

Throughout the match, MJF would go on to eliminate Thomas; antagonize fan favorites Brandon Cutler and Shawn Spears; steal a moment from WCW veteran Glacier; aid in the elimination of the smaller-framed Jungle Boy; and slink out of the ring prior to the finale, nearly stealing the win from the joker, Hangman Page.

MJF didn’t get the win, but his character had certainly shown through, and he was clearly painted to be a big deal. This was only furthered later on in the night as MJF interrupted Bret “The Hitman” Hart’s introduction of the AEW World Championship. MJF crapped on the crowd and made fun of Bret for the recent attack he suffered at WWE’s Hall of Fame awards ceremony, but most importantly, he said that he was the youngest and fastest rising star in professional wrestling.

Max sauntered down the ramp, looked “the Best There Was, the Best There Is, and the Best There Ever Will Be” in the eyes, and trashed Bret’s “outdated” moniker. Instead, it was time for MJF to make his claim. He turned to Hangman, and for the first time on AEW television, he uttered his aggravating catchphrase.

“I’m better than you…and you know it.”

Maxwell Jacob Friedman believed his own hype from the start, though he lost his first two multi-man matches to Hangman, MJF wouldn’t make a habit of losing. He lived up to the hype that he created, and all the while, he made enemies for life, talked unbelievable amounts of trash, and unfortunately stole the show.

MJF has made himself undeniable, and he’s one of the most fleshed out characters in AEW today.

And part of that is because, unlike many characters who started off as clearly “the good guy” or “the bad guy,” MJF began his AEW run with one of the most interesting dichotomies on the roster.

MJF is a Traitor

Before there was Dynamite, AEW split its storytelling between Being the Elite and Road To… on YouTube. This era of Being the Elite saw multiple wrestlers slowly appear more on the show en route to the debut of the Elite’s new wrestling promotion, including the weird hardcore British guy in Jimmy Havoc, the lovable cameraman that was Brandon Cutler, and Cody Rhodes’s new sidekick, MJF.

MJF was very obviously a bad guy, but Cody never seemed to be around when Max displayed these tendencies. Cody would introduce MJF to the Young Bucks as if Max was the salt of the earth, then Cody would need to check on Brandi, and while Cody was gone, MJF would tear the Young Bucks — or whoever else was in the sketch — a new one. Then, as soon as Cody came back, MJF would smile, put on some Cody merch, and leave with his bestie.

Though Cody had some heelish tendencies in his debut match against brother Dustin, his tearful family reunion after the match set Cody on the path toward becoming the company’s top babyface, all while Cody had this jerky little tag along.

Each show, Cody became a more storied hero, while MJF grew more confident in his villainy, only taking a break to be Cody’s buddy. Cody’s Fyter Fest saw the American Nightmare wrestle a young star and get betrayed by a longtime friend. MJF’s Fyter Fest saw him search for various ways to steal a win from Hangman, Jungle Boy, and Jimmy Havoc, but MJF still came out to defend Cody’s honor. At All Out, Cody came out with his loving wife, his adorable dog, the always happy legend DDP, and MJF, who turned DDP’s self-high-five into a dirty gesture.

MJF would continue to live in this role as AEW Dynamite began airing, starting his television run by beating up Brandon Cutler again while his mentor got mugged in the main event. MJF wouldn’t leave Cody hanging from there, though, helping Cody and the Elite fight back Chris Jericho and the Inner Circle, with MJF even giving Cody his prized Burberry scarf to help Cody break through a glass door.

When it was time for Full Gear and Cody’s contract for his AEW World Championship match only allowed him one person at ringside, it only made sense that Cody would choose his most loyal and fit companion, MJF. The rest of the Elite were busy, and Cody certainly didn’t want his wife or the legends he hung out with to be in harm’s way.

So, Cody challenged for Chris Jericho’s world championship, with the stipulation being that Cody could never challenge for the gold again if he lost that night. Cody fought valiantly, putting his face on the line and riding the energy of the crowd, even as Jericho put Cody and his bloody forehead into the Walls of Jericho.

MJF watched on and made a show out of how much he believed in Cody, but before Cody could find his own way out of the Walls, MJF threw in the towel.

The crowd was in shock. Then, they were booing. Thanks to the seemingly well-meaning MJF, Cody could never challenge for the AEW World Championship again.

MJF got in the ring and tried to plead his case to Cody, and right when it seemed like Cody was willing to listen, MJF kicked him in the groin. Cody was betrayed by the man we all knew would betray him, but Cody made a mistake that many men would make: he believed MJF had a soul.

MJF stated aloud that he only glommed onto Cody to find a spot at the top of the card, then took Cody out of world title contention at the first opportunity because this wasn’t Cody’s company to be on top of — it was MJF’s. And when Cody came out to try and get revenge, MJF brought out the debuting Wardlow, a bodyguard who MJF was fully in charge of.

That’s the thing: MJF was never meant to be in anyone’s shadow. MJF hired Wardlow, then the Butcher and the Blade, because he knew that he had them under his thumb. He owned Wardlow’s whole AEW contract, and he knew that his tag team bruisers didn’t have aspirations beyond beating people up and maybe getting tag gold. MJF was alone at the top of this makeshift stable, just the way he wanted it.

Cody wasn’t the last person that MJF tried to betray, but whereas Cody was a foolishly trusting man, Chris Jericho was a seasoned heel. The minute MJF announced that he totally did want to join someone else’s stable, Jericho made MJF jump through hoops to join. They had town halls. They had group votes. They very memorably had a dinner and a show.

MJF, meanwhile, accepted all of Jericho’s challenges, with the only sneaky thing he did the whole time being his repeated digs at Sammy Guevara. Guevara was already Jericho’s protégé, and though MJF didn’t truly want that spot, splitting Guevara from Jericho would create dissention within the Inner Circle and hobble the rise of a fellow young star.

MJF gained entry into the Inner Circle by beating Chris Jericho at Full Gear 2020, but despite the work MJF did to break the group up from the inside, Jericho admitted in the lead-up to Double or Nothing 2021 that he’d never trusted Max and was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Jericho thought that there was nothing MJF and Wardlow could do to outsmart and overpower the five-man Inner Circle, but what Jericho didn’t count on was MJF starting another, more official stable in place of the Inner Circle.

MJF made some calls, and all of a sudden, MJF and Wardlow were aligned with Shawn Spears, FTR, and legend Tully Blanchard as “The Pinnacle.” Though MJF’s outfit lost their Stadium Stampede match at Double or Nothing, they would go on to win the first ever Blood and Guts match, and they’d spend the next year supporting MJF’s rise — though, notably, MJF never returned their support.

Eventually, Max’s luck with betraying noteworthy people started to fizzle out, as he had absolutely no good will left with anyone. His hired hand, Wardlow, got tired of MJF’s bullying over the previous two years and finally left MJF hanging in the middle of his big match. FTR distanced themselves from Max, honoring their friendship with Wardlow over their business relationship with MJF. Butcher and Blade were always there, but since they always had to be paid to help MJF, they were no better of friends to MJF than guys like Rush and Lance Archer were.

MJF’s ability to betray people got so rocky that, despite building them up for months, Stokely Hathaway and the Firm betrayed MJF mere weeks into their partnership, realizing that MJF had no good intentions for them — and they were definitely right.

MJF had to have other skills to bank on.

Fortunately, he had plenty.

MJF Has a Silver Tongue

MJF can get a crowd riled up with the best of them, and while that does well in terms of keeping him in the minds of the “marks,” he also uses this skill to get into the minds of his weaker opponents.

Brian Pillman Jr. got it rough in the weeks leading up to Dynamite: Grand Slam in 2021, as MJF spent the whole build-up to their match trashing the name of Pillman’s late father and implying that Pillman Sr. was in Hell. For any other pairing, this would be the story of an underdog hero winning despite all odds because he’d been pushed over the edge. In practice, Pillman was far too angry and befuddled to actually focus on beating MJF in a wrestling match, and MJF walked away with one of his many victories.

MJF’s devilish charisma has also seen him get crowds behind him, especially as he returned from his months’ long hiatus post-Wardlow powerbombing the life out of him at Double or Nothing 2022. Nowhere is MJF more beloved than in his hometown of Long Island, New York, though, the only place in the world where MJF is consistently cheered over the rest of the card despite him still ostensibly being a villain. Sure, he’ll sing and dance for the crowd and accept keys to the city, but he’ll also stomp out Dante Martin in a gang beatdown to raucous cheers.

The one feud that saw MJF ride this line of hated and beloved the most was his repeated run-ins with CM Punk between Full Gear 2021 and Revolution 2022. What started as MJF and Punk throwing barbs at each other about the other being disappointing (MJF thinking Punk is a coward for leaving and a joke for coming back, while Punk thought MJF was only going for low-hanging fruit) saw both men evolve into much more complex characters.

MJF spent months running from Punk, only to cheat and defeat Punk “twice” (before and after a match restart) in Punk’s hometown of Chicago. Punk didn’t take this lightly, challenging MJF to a dog collar match, and though MJF accepted, he also did some unconventional defense with his mind games.

MJF had gone on record before saying that, before he was a wrestler, he was a scrawny Jewish kid being beat up by football players. In the lead-up to Revolution, MJF got more in-depth, saying that the one thing that got him through his worst day was the fact that he was going to see CM Punk in person that night. MJF loved Punk as a kid, and when he left, it shattered Max’s heart. But it was also the memory of Punk and what he stood for that spurred MJF to become a wrestler in the first place, with Max vowing to be better than Punk.

Punk made MJF into who he was, and Punk felt bad. He spent a week thinking about it, and though Punk still didn’t trust Max, he wanted to offer MJF the handshake that he didn’t give him months back.

MJF denied the handshake. Instead, he went in for a hug.

Then, like with Cody, he hoofed Punk below the belt.

Once again, that’s the thing about MJF: he knows what “the right thing” is. He knows how to play well with others; he knows how to tell people what they want to hear; he has a tragic background, and he knows how to capitalize on it to make himself seem like a hero.

But MJF doesn’t want to be a hero. He didn’t want to be one with Cody. He didn’t want to be one with Punk. He didn’t want to be one when he returned to AEW in late-2022.

MJF is comfortable as the monster that he is, and he’ll lose the hand he wears his Dynamite Diamond Ring on before he ever dares to love the crowd the way they’ve tried to love him.

Except for Long Islanders. They get a pass.

MJF is Better Than You

The catch when it comes to forgoing your morals and betraying everyone you know is that, if you’re going to end up alone, you have to be REALLY good on your own.

Unfortunately for everyone but MJF himself, Maxwell Jacob Friedman is an incredible wrestler.

MJF’s first big win saw him steal all of his momentum back from Hangman Page, using interference from Wardlow and the finisher he stole from Cody to beat and embarrass Hangman and win the aforementioned Dynamite Diamond Ring.

MJF cheated and still cheats a lot, with MJF using all of these tricks to beat Cody Rhodes at Revolution and put his former mentor behind him, but his next feud with fellow youngster Jungle Boy saw MJF put his actual wrestling skills on the line.

This feud was described in detail in the third article of this series, but the important takeaway from their Double or Nothing match — besides the general fact that it was arguably the in-ring match of the show — was that MJF won with a good pinfall. There wasn’t a ring punch beforehand, nor did MJF grab his opponent’s tights. MJF simply locked Jungle Boy in a pin he couldn’t get out of.

Now the cat was out of the bag: MJF could chain wrestle, do springboard moves, and be an all-around gifted athlete, but in basically every match outside of the Jungle Boy match, he was choosing not to be that guy.

When MJF fought Jon Moxley for the AEW Championship at All Out that year, he tried to do so by getting Moxley’s Paradigm Shift finisher banned. When he beat Jericho at Full Gear, he tried to have Wardlow interfere and went for Eddie Guerrero’s “false disqualification” spot before resorting to classic tights pulling.

But even in the Jericho match, MJF still tried to wrestle clean for almost the entire match, only resorting to cheating when he wasn’t sure he could win. Same thing with his match against Sammy Guevara the following summer, where the men wrestled valiantly and proved they were equals, but when it appeared that Guevara was the better man on the night, MJF simply had Shawn Spears interfere, giving MJF a win in the history books even if it’s not convincing visually.

MJF knows that he’s good enough to be competitive if he wrestles fair, but being competitive isn’t the same as flat out winning. MJF would call his shots, going so far as to tell Darby Allin that he was going to pin Darby with a headlock takeover at Full Gear 2021, but when it became clear that Darby actually could chain grapple like MJF, Max punched him with the Dynamite Diamond and pinned him as advertised, tossing Darby over his hip with a basic wrestling move.

MJF used his silver tongue to finally win the AEW World Championship a year after this, getting into William Regal’s mind and setting up Regal to betray then-champion Jon Moxley and allow MJF to get the victory, and even there, MJF’s traitorous tendencies returned as he knocked Regal out with his own brass knuckles two weeks later.

But the fallout from this defeat of Moxley and betrayal of Regal set MJF up against arguably the greatest wrestler in the world, Bryan Danielson.

Danielson not only wanted to fight for the honor of Regal, but he also wanted to prove to MJF that being a great professional wrestler was better than any cheating. Bryan watched on as MJF had yet another amazing match against Ricky Starks, but MJF once again panicked and kicked Ricky in his yam bag region to win.

Bryan told MJF that there’d be no easy way out during their championship match, because MJF was going to have to beat Bryan in a 60-minute iron man match, a match designed to push wrestlers past their breaking points.

Bryan did severely miscalculate when he figured that MJF wouldn’t find some way to cheat, as Max took a DQ loss early in the match to go down 0-2, then pinned Danielson twice in rapid succession to tie the match 2-2. MJF outfought Bryan to get his third fall, then got submitted by the grappler to tie it once again. Over an hour into the match, MJF and Danielson were equals according to the scoreboard, and once the two of them wrestled into overtime, MJF got the most defining statement of his title reign, making Bryan Danielson TAP OUT to end the match at 4-3 and retain his title.

Was this win fully clean? Not at all; however, can anyone else in AEW say that they made Danielson tap out (not lose via ref stoppage, Hager and Jericho fans)? No — that is an honor that only MJF has, and another piece of supporting evidence for when he tells his opponents that he’s better than them and they know it.

MJF and the Other Pillars

It’s hard to tell how MJF truly feels about the other three Pillars since so much of what comes out of his mouth is either a lie or has an explicit agenda. However, the past few months of AEW TV (starting right after his rivalry with Danielson) have seen him deal with the others in various interesting ways.

With Jungle Boy, MJF sees his first rival as a disappointment. Back then, MJF said that he and Jungle Boy were cut from the same cloth, as Jungle Boy was similarly born with a silver spoon since he is the son of the late actor Luke Perry. After Double or Nothing 2020, MJF thought he’d be wrestling Jack Perry over and over into the twilight of their careers, but while MJF is World Champion, Jack’s career has been, to borrow a word from MJF, “mid.” To Max, Jungle Boy should have and should still become more like MJF, because until Jungle Boy gets an edge, MJF believes Jungle Boy will always be in his shadow.

Meanwhile, MJF has continued to find Sammy Guevara gullible ever since the Inner Circle feud. Back then, MJF tried to gaslight Guevara so that Guevara would appear to be the aggressor. Today, MJF tried being friendly, offering Guevara cash in return for weeks of fake friendship and a guaranteed win at the pay-per-view for Friedman. Though this partnership fizzled out, MJF’s offer to have Guevara lay down for him stood until the very week of the show when Guevara turned it down, as Guevara has grown past what Max thinks of him.

Finally, there’s Darby Allin. Darby was MJF’s final opponent of the three; at the same time, Darby was the first to win a championship, while MJF was the last — though the belt Max won was the largest. While MJF billed Darby as a Pillar both in that now-deleted Twitter thread and live on Dynamite, MJF has the rawest critiques of Darby. MJF calls Darby possibly the best wrestler he’s been across the ring from, and their match was simply amazing, but Darby got beat by a basic wrestling move, and he’s not World Champion.

But in saying that, MJF is willfully ignoring the part where he had to cheat to beat Darby. In belittling Jack Perry’s accomplishments, MJF is ignoring the fact that Jungle Boy embarrassed him on Dynamite days after their Double or Nothing match. In playing Sammy for a fool, MJF is forgetting that Guevara saw through him last time and had Max beat before Shawn Spears interfered.

Sammy Guevara is smarter than MJF gives him credit for. Jungle Boy has grown more than MJF will admit. Darby Allin just might be a better champion than MJF, just like all three of them might be better wrestlers than MJF now if MJF lets the moves speak for themselves without weapons and treachery.

On Sunday, May 28^th, 2023, Maxwell Jacob Friedman will face off in a match with the three men he once called Pillars alongside himself, and all three of them have grown tremendously in the time since their last singles encounters.

MJF has cheated them in the past. He’s spent the past few months trying to get into their heads.

But at Double or Nothing, will MJF actually be better than them?