9 Ups & 9 Downs For AEW In 2022
4. The Coronation Of MJF
MJF enjoyed the best year of his and indeed most people's career, and he missed several months and worked just eight matches at time of writing. And they say Jeff Jarrett, Hulk Hogan, and Kevin Nash can game the system. MJF, political genius, has them all beat.
He's also a far better in-ring talent that any of them; in one of the few matches he worked, against Wheeler YUTA, he used every last bump as a distinctive story beat. Ranging from slapstick to agonised flailing, he did a magnificent job of building the meaning of the match, putting his opponent over, and convincing the crowd that YUTA could win. And that crowd didn't even want him to before the bell sounded. MJF was the de facto babyface, but that's how fantastic he is.
He's even better on the microphone of course. Every promo he cut was the best promo of his career and of the year. He manipulated the wrestling world into thinking he was a good person at his core...
...twice.
He told Tony Khan that he was a f*cking mark. He conjured a vast range of emotions; he made you laugh, he made you hate him, he made you question yourself for hating him, he made you want to tune in next week to see what could twist he could possibly engineer, and he made you interested in the big match you had to pay for, at Revolution, to an extent that nobody else in the entire wrestling world did.