Top AEW heel MJF appears to be headed toward a face turn, which otherwise makes no sense, unless you think back to the late 1990s.
I think Tony Khan is about to cast MJF as his “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
This would be the only way a face turn for MJF would make any sense.
The complicating factor here is, it would involve Khan taking on an on-screen role as an authority figure, which he seems to not want to do, having noted on his supposedly awful guest appearance on Ariel Helwani’s podcast that he’d only been on-screen on AEW TV four times in three years, and none of those four were in character.
But he also noted in the interview with Helwani that he’d been in character several times with Tony Schiavone on Impact TV cutting heel promos to try to put over Kenny Omega’s run as the dual AEW-Impact world champion, and had fun doing that.
He wasn’t Vince McMahon or anything close, but he’s done it before.
Now think back to MJF’s return, at the end of the “All Out” pay-per-view.
(Yes, that “All Out” pay-per-view.)
Before the blowup after the show, MJF was revealed as the masked man who had won the Casino Battle Royale and a future AEW world title shot, and then we were treated to the audio of a voicemail message left for MJF by Khan in which Khan offered him the shot and more money if he would return from his summer sabbatical.
The voicemail got lost in the shuffle with the post-“All Out” media scrum and backstage fight involving CM Punk and The Elite, which I’m still not 100 percent convinced wasn’t a work, because if it wasn’t, it could fit nicely into an update of the “Stone Cold” vs. McMahon storyline.
Punk, in the media scrum, called out Omega and The Young Bucks for their backstage politics, invoking their real-life role as company EVPs, in the process taking it from real-life into the realm of storylines, should there be a desire from the booking perspective to use it for a storyline.
It’s not hard to imagine Omega, The Bucks and Khan in an alliance as The Authority, with MJF, whose exile from the company was initiated with his expletive-laden rant in June aimed at Khan, leading the resistance.
Punk, said to be on the shelf from injuries sustained in his “All Out” world-title win over Jon Moxley, could play into this later, to help ratchet things up next spring, perhaps.
How all of this would play over the next few weeks, with MJF set to challenge Moxley for the AEW title at “Full Gear” next month, I’m not sure.
Me personally, I would book a finish with outside interference costing MJF the title – perhaps involving members of The Elite in masks, making us think it’s The Firm; and maybe also, at the end, William Regal, who has been engaging in a scintillating verbal back-and-forth with MJF on TV the past few weeks, and who would be a great mouthpiece for Khan, should Khan prefer to remain, as he probably should, in this fantasy-booking scenario, behind the scenes.
This, I get from MJF being beat down by The Firm after Moxley’s main-event win over Penta Wednesday.
It’s what happens when you watch “Dynamite” right before you go to bed, and then can’t sleep.
Your mind wanders …
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Chris Graham
