MJF On “Laughable” Comparison To Conor McGregor, WWE Matches That Hooked Him On Wrestling

In a recent interview on What the Heck, MJF discussed the promo comparisons between him and Conor McGregor, the WWE matches that got him hooked on wrestling, and much more. You can read his comments below.

MJF on the promo skills comparison between him and MMA stars Conor McGregor and Colby Covington: “I think it’s cute in comparison to me. It’s laughable, but I think they’re great in the world of MMA. If either of those two guys came into the world of AEW, they would be in a lot of trouble. They’d get absolutely verbally bent over, if you know what I mean. For what they do, I really enjoy what Conor McGregor did in the UFC. Colby Covington is somebody who understands how to get a reaction out of a crowd, whether positive or negative. And yeah, I enjoy what both of them did. But could they spar with me? No, absolutely not. That would not be good. I don’t think that would be good for anybody, honestly. It would be uncomfortable.”

On the WWE matches that got him hooked on pro wrestling: “The first match I ever watched, I was at Hollywood Video with my father. I stopped and saw this dude that looked like a zombie on the front of a cover, and I was like, ‘Who is this?’ I brought it home and popped it in my TV, and I skipped all the way to the match on the back of the DVD that said Hell in a Cell. The first match I fully ever watched was Mankind vs. The Undertaker in the Hell in a Cell Match. That was the first match I ever watched. Instantly, I was hooked. The first match I ever went to where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna do this,’ was the first-ever Elimination Chamber in Madison Square Garden. I remember Shawn Michaels won the match, and he was a bloody mess with his weird haircut. He hit the pose, and I just looked to my left and looked to my right and everybody was standing and screaming and yelling and crying. I just remember tugging my dad on the arm and saying, ‘Yeah I can do that.’ So, that’s where we’re at now, and I was right.

On mixing wrestling nostalgia with the new era of talent: “I think it’s awesome we get to sprinkle my legendary rise with guys like Taz, Jim Ross, and shitty Tony Schiavone. But realistically, the reason why everyone tunes in, and it shows if you look at the quarterly ratings is they want to know what I’m doing the next week. What is MJF doing? What is he gonna do next? That’s because unlike everybody else on their roster, I have it, and I have an abundance of it. I love, love, love making people lay down in bed at night, put their head on their pillow, and go, ‘God, I hate that guy. I better tune in next week.’ And that’s that. I think people are gonna look back at this era of professional wrestling as the golden era – to me, my favorite version of wrestling was World Class, Global, Memphis, and Mid-Atlantic.

“The territory days is what I loved to watch the most, but now I feel like we’re almost in a resurgence where you have a lot of these journeymen – these incredible professional wrestlers who might not have been used properly by the monopolized company that was WWE at the time, they had nowhere to go. Now they do. And now that people can be showcased properly, it’s sink or swim. If you don’t make it in AEW, the only person you have to blame is the person you see in the mirror. You’re not being held back in AEW. Nobody is handing me a script in AEW because they know if they did, I’d chew it up and spit it in their face. That’s what All Elite Wrestling is – we’re all going out there and doing our thing, and we’re doing what we think the sport of professional wrestling is supposed to be.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit What the Heck with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.