AEW: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About MJF
5. Wanted To Be A Pro Football Player To Impress Vince McMahon
In that impassioned Dynamite promo, designed to draw empathy and leave CM Punk racked with guilt, MJF claimed his school football team bullied him for being Jewish. Of course, after his vicious attack on CM Punk, it’s hard to know which details to believe. MJF probably prefers to keep us guessing.
Still, whatever his teammates did or didn’t do to him, he didn’t let it hold him back on the football field. He excelled at the sport and went to college to play football and pursue an NFL career.
With no AEW around yet, a young Maxwell thought a pro football career was his best route to wrestling stardom and WWE. As he explained in an interview with Darren Paltrowitz:-
“You know it's so funny. I wanted to play in the NFL just so I would be more appealing to WWE because there was no AEW at that point. So, in my head I was, like, “OK, I'm going to be the best middle linebacker in college sports, then I'm going to go play in the NFL for like a year or two and I'll be famous. I'll call Vince McMahon on his cell phone and say, ‘Hey, book me.’ So that was my game plan."
It might seem a weird approach to a successful career in wrestling; playing football instead of, well, wrestling. Sadly, given WWE’s hiring policies at various points over the last few decades, it have been all too astute. Luckily his plans changed and he ended up in AEW.