MJF Gives CM Punk His First Loss in AEW

MJF gave CM Punk the first loss of his All Elite Wrestling career on this week's AEW Dynamite, defeating the former WWE Champion in his hometown of Chicago. Friedman looked to have the match won early when he used a long piece of tape as a garrote to choke Punk out, causing him to pass out. But just before he could be declared the winner, Bryce Remsburg saw Friedman drop the tape and realized he had been using it to illegally choke his opponent out. He then called for the match to be restarted. 

Late in the bout, Wardlow arrived at ringside, stepped over an unconscious Friedman and got directly in Punk's face. But what wasn't initially revealed was that he passed the Dynamite Diamond Ring to Friedman. Once Punk got Max back in the ring Wardlow distracted the referee by standing on the apron, allowing Friedman to nail Punk across the face with the ring. He then covered the veteran star for the win.

.@RealWardlow's intentions were seemingly ambiguous, but @The_MJF has taken advantage of the situation and knocked out @CMPunk in front of a stunned crowd and takes the victory here in Chicago on #AEWDynamite on @TBSNetwork! 😱 pic.twitter.com/YR2QLVjuFb

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) February 3, 2022

The commentary team claimed this was the biggest win of Friedman's AEW career, but the 25-year-old has been racking those up since the company first launched. He has pinfall victories over Cody Rhodes (and cost him the ability to ever challenge for the AEW World Championship) and Chris Jericho while also winning the first-ever Blood & Guts match when The Pinnacle beat The Inner Circle last year.

Friedman and Punk have been feuding for months, tracing back to their war of words last November. Their first promo battle went viral and even wound up getting mentioned on Monday Night Raw the following week.

"We gave them no choice but to speak about us," Friedman told the New York Post in December. "We were the talk of the town. We were the talk of the world. We were trending at one point No. 1 on all of YouTube. I don't know if you know about this app YouTube. But Google it, a lot of videos pop up every point three seconds there are probably thousands of videos that pop up. We were numerous uno, number one, in the world. That's the power of CM Punk versus MJF."

"It's something (a match with Punk) people have wanted to see," he added. "I don't blame Adam Copeland, Edge for talking about MJF-CM Punk on Raw. How could I? It was the most special thing that happened in our sport in decades."