AEW’s return to Long Island was extra special this time around for Maxwell Jacob Friedman.
The Plainview native received the key to The Town of Oyster Bay on Monday.
He was surrounded by family, friends and fans at town hall as it was declared MJF Day to honor Friedman’s wrestling accomplishments, charity work with AEW Together and his fight against anti-Semitism prior to “AEW Dynamite” at UBS Area on Wednesday.
After the ceremony, the AEW world champion sat down with The Post’s Joseph Staszewski for some Q&A.
Q: In some of those key moments, when you’re driving here, when the key is being placed in your hand, it seems like you were almost fighting back some emotion.
A: I don’t know if you could tell, I almost cried up there. This means everything to me. This place is home and now I have a key to that home. Growing up here wasn’t always easy. Having Attention Deficit Disorder and having a legitimate learning disability in school in a time where people were still adjusting to realizing whether or not that’s real or fake or an excuse. People struggled with it and I dang sure struggled with it. Again, the community is so strong and tight knit and when people found out I was going to try to achieve this incomparable dream people came together.
I remember seeing videos of people in the local bars watching me versus Jon Moxley (at Full Gear) and beating that total dweeb, loser. I’m proud of that. I’m proud that people at home that are from this place know that I genuinely have a deep caring and yearning to come back every week and I’m never gonna leave. I’m doing movies and TV now and pro wrestling and it’s never even entered my mind the thought of living anywhere else, ever, ever, ever.
Q: What we see on screen from you is not someone we think of as doing charity, helping kids …
A: Let me … Only Long Island people. I don’t help disgusting poors from outside this region and I never will. I’m here for Long Islanders and I’d also say I’m here for people who are members of the tribe, people in the Jewish community as a whole. There’s not a lot of us. It’s because we’ve been killed off time and time again.
In all sincerity, it means the world to me to be a Jew that is brave and strong, a larger than life personality as opposed to feeble or cheap, which you know unfortunately, those are a lot of the words people will use to describe people in the Jewish community and I’m glad to prove that’s not the case. A Jewish person can be anything they want to be. They don’t have to be a doctor or a lawyer You can be a professional wrestler.
Q: What does it mean to a performer when their home city becomes part of the show?
A: For me, I come here and it’s the one time of year that people from around here get to have the cathartic appreciation of me because wherever else I go I’m the most hated man on planet Earth. I come here, I’m the most loved. For me that means a lot because I get respite, even if it’s only one week. People got to tip their hat to me. It means the world to me and that mean’s I’m doing my job.
Q: How important was it for AEW to have that moment and now this storyline with the four pillars in the ring together and now try to bring up the rest of the talent around you as champion?
A: I thought at one point in time it could have been the Jack Perry show. I thought at one point in time it could have been the Sammy Guevara show. I thought at one point in time it could have been the Darby Allin show. I won the race and I won the race by a large margin.
But now the fact that these guys have caught up and they’re in the hunt for this [title,] when we’re all in our 20s and we’re all at the pinnacle at this profession battling for the most important title that there is in our sport, I think that’s very telling of the success not just of the four of us, but the success of All Elite Wrestling because All Elite Wrestling has built four megastars that are household names that could have the huge honor of being the holder of the Triple B (Big Burberry Belt).
Q: Why was a 60-minute iron man match with Bryan Danielson so important for your first title defense?
A: My legacy up to that point was as one of, if not the best talker in the business. That always irked me. Because I feel it’s very obvious now that I’m the most complete package that this sport has ever seen. I think I’ve already had a Hall of Fame career and I’m only 27.
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That match proved that I’m just as great in the ring as I am on the microphone and that’s pretty scary to think about. I think it’s very obvious I’m the best professional wrestler in the world. I don’t have a gang of people around me. I don’t need their help. It’s just me and me alone with my mouth and my work in the ring.
Q: Was it important to do that first?
A: It was pretty much to silence anyone who still up to this point had the gall to say, “he can talk, but can he really wrestle?”
Q: We have seen AEW’s ratings kind of go a little up and down the past couple of weeks. What is it going to take to get that ship more consistent and will it take some time?
A: The consistency of what I’m doing, and I can tell you I see the minute for minute every week — I’m the biggest minute for minute rating draw we have. What I’ll also say is this, and it’s something for some reason wrestling fans are not talking about: from 2019 to now, the amount of drop-off there has been of people having cable and cutting the cord is insane. I think it was 30 percent, 30 to 35 percent. COVID had a lot to do with it because people all jumped to streaming.
If you look at it from that standpoint, we’re doing the equivalent now with the amount of cable that is left that we were in 2019. Us doing a million in 2019 and us doing in the high 8s or low 9s (900,000) now, it is the same legitimately and that’s just fricking math. Is it something wrestling fans are gonna talk about? No.
What I can tell you is this: if Warner Bros. Discovery is willing to give us not one, not two, but three shows — now there is all this talk potentially about a fourth one. So Rampage, Dynamite, All Access, there might be a fourth one coming.
Q: Huge announcement coming?
A: Huge announcement coming, there’s a big rumor mill. Is there a fourth show? I’m pretty sure Warner Bro. Discovery is very happy with MJF and very happy with All Elite Wrestling.
Q: After the WWE sale, when you have that big of a company on the other side, does that bode even better for you in 2024?
A: The better they do, the better we do. The better we do, the better they do. The more their talent gets compensated the more our talent has to get compensated because at the end of the day, this is just like any professional sport. It’s all positive. Do I feel like what we have done in just four years is substantially larger than probably any wrestling company in the history of the sport? Yeah, I do, because that’s a fact. I’m really proud to be a part of that fact since day one.
Q: Do you have any reaction to the back and forth between CM Punk and Jon Moxley we have seen recently and how that could reflect back on the company?
A: If you look at social media as a medium, it’s great, but what do you think the percentage of people of social media is to the people watching our show every week?
Q: Small
A: Small is an understatement. It’s bite-sized and I always laugh and I always chuckle when people try to make bigger scenarios than what’s really going on. I think it’s awesome that people want to romanticize all the insanity. They want to romanticize, “It’s AEW vs. WWE. It’s CM Punk vs. Jon Moxley.” What it is, is chatter and it’s chatter amongst a much smaller circle than people realize. Again, it’s whatever narrative people want to have.
I go back to the cable cord-cutting thing that no one’s referring to. Mathematically, we’re doing great and Warner Bros. Discovery is freaking out over what we’re doing for them. Their two biggest prospects are the NBA and AEW.
Q: Did you watch your buddy Cody Rhodes’ match at WrestleMania and what did you think?
A: Cody Rhodes was a mentor to me and without Cody Rhodes, I can genuinely say I’m not in the position I am today. I think Roman Reigns beat him. I think he put in a tremendous effort. I think, much like me, he has had one hell of body transformation. He looks incredible. I look better, let’s be honest. But he looks incredible. He looked like a top guy. He was presented as a top guy and he got a top guy reaction. I couldn’t be happier for Cody. Did he lose? Yes. But I think he had one hell of a showing.
