MJF: Other companies are giving you fast food, AEW makes ‘gourmet burgers’
MJF believes AEW’s authenticity is what sets the promotion apart from its competitors.
While making the rounds at Super Bowl Radio Row on Thursday, MJF sat down for an interview with former NFL player Ross Tucker. MJF discussed the formation of the company and the success they’ve had since launching in 2019. He credits that success to how AEW has differentiated itself as an alternative, offering “gourmet burgers” while other promotions are giving fans fast food.
“It’s massively successful,” MJF said about AEW. “Tony Khan is a visionary. He’s a mark, but he’s a visionary. He loved professional wrestling and he saw that there was an opening in the marketplace for an alternative to WWE. Where there is Coke, you can have Pepsi. Where there is McDonald’s, you can have Burger King. And so on and so forth. And they just jumped in and they were able to pitch it in Hollywood. And here we are seven years later, and we’re killing it. We’ve had events with 82,000 people in a stadium at Wembley that I main evented and won, no big deal. We have pay-per-views almost monthly. We’re always normally in the top five on cable and streaming for our shows for Dynamite and Collision. And we’re proud of what we’re doing right now, man. We’re up year-over-year in ticket sales with me as champion — duh, must-see.
“And the thing that I would want to impart on people who, if you’re not a professional wrestling fan or if you are a professional wrestling fan and you haven’t given us a look yet, I think what we bring is, it’s an authenticity. You know, the other companies, it kind of feels like McDonald’s. They’re giving you fast food. We make gourmet burgers. And I think that was a part of Tony Khan’s pitch for sure.”
MJF pointed to the “f*** ICE” chants from Dynamite this week as another way AEW is unlike its competitors. He feels anyone else would have censored the crowd, but AEW listens to the fans, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
“Another thing that’s great at AEW is our fans have a voice. Literally last night, we were in Vegas and they started an ‘f*** ICE’ chant. Now, I don’t care what side of the political line that you land on, there’s no other wrestling promotion that wouldn’t censor the fans,” MJF said. “But we don’t do that, we’re the listening company. So if all the fans want to chant that, we’re going to let them chant that. And I think that that’s inherently really cool and awesome. And I think that’s what makes my company special. We don’t censor the fans. It’s nice. It’s really nice.”
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.