6 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite Title Tuesday (Results & Review)

2. Not The Time

After a verbal duel between MJF and Bullet Club Gold, Juice Robinson revealed that he had a roll of quarters with, literally, MJF's name on it. MJF, appalled, walked out. He said he knew what Juice was doing and refused to entertain it.

Now is not the time to explore antisemitism in the context of professional wrestling. Real world events render it trivial. No suggestion is being made that AEW is ghoulishly trying to capitalise on the bleak situation between Israel and Palestine, but even writing those two words in the context of a wrestling review is very weird.

MJF is a Jewish man who cares deeply about his religion and the persecution of Jewish people outside of those events, which, again, play no factor.

If anybody is going to tackle this theme correctly, it's him. Neither MJF nor AEW should be blamed for pro wrestling's ghastly track record with this brand of material. Perhaps the medium is capable of doing this sort of thing sensitively, but nobody would know that because it's been presided over by ar*eholes most of the time. North American wrestling is a morality play, but is this sort of thing much too ambitious? Is it worth unlocking awful memories as a means of having a wrestler win a fake wrestling match when that could be achieved in any other number of ways?

The timing is incredibly awkward, and gauging by a cursory glance of Twitter, more than one of my Jewish followers expressed reservations over the direction. I'm not Jewish. Please listen to or read the perspective of Jewish fans and creators before you take anything from this.

I don't want to tell Jewish people nor anybody what to think. I can only tell you what I think, for whatever that is worth, and I truly have no idea. All I know is that this feels like a risk that no wrestling promotion ever has handled particularly well.