AEW’s Wardlow was given a push in 2022 that few wrestlers ever get to see. It all kicked off at the Revolution 2022 pay-per-view, where he not only earned a TNT Championship shot by winning a six-way ladder match but finally turned on his “employer” MJF by assisting CM Punk during the show’s ultraviolent Dog Collar Match. What followed was months of oppression from Friedman, which only helped “Mr. Mayhem” generate more fan support. The feud, which technically started back in late 2019 when the two started working together, finally culminated at Double or Nothing when Wardlow squashed MJF with 10 thunderous powerbombs.
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On paper, this should have been what catapulted Wardlow to new heights within All Elite Wrestling, especially once he finally won the TNT Championship two months later. But MJF still managed to keep most of the spotlight on himself, first with a situation surrounding a missed meet-and-greet appearance and an allegedly purchased plane ticket that suddenly threw his match at Double or Nothing into jeopardy and then with an expletive-riddled rant directed at Tony Khan that led to a months-long hiatus.
Meanwhile, Wardlow’s TNT title reign never managed to pick up the same steam he had months earlier. He mowed down a series of opponents and wouldn’t have a legitimate challenger until Brian Cage, but his title reign was already three months old by that point. He’d finally drop the title to Samoa Joe at Full Gear after teaming with Joe for the past few months.
Their grudge match on the Dec. 28 episode of Dynamite finally gave Wardlow the chance to sink his teeth into a new feud. Not only did Joe win in dominant fashion, but he then sheared off Wardlow’s trademark ponytail. The big man wouldn’t return for a month, and once he did he revealed his hair was the last connection he had to his father before he died from cancer.
The two will collide once again at the Revolution pay-per-view this Sunday with the TNT Championship on the line. Wardlow spoke with ComicBook recently to promote the match and reflected on what went wrong with his 2022 run.
“Man, I think about this a lot, and I was just thinking about this very in-depth recently because I feel like I took it for granted a little bit. Few reasons,” he began. “So I’m a negative thinker, I’m my biggest critic. I don’t think at the time I allowed myself to comprehend just how big I was and how popular and how just outrageous the ideal of Wardlow was at the time.
“Also, I think there’s a little bit of truth to Max (MJF) calling himself the devil. Right around the time Max and I started our feud, I really just lost myself, and I just wasn’t myself in that whole stretch of time. I was just a different person and I was a ball of stress and I really couldn’t focus or grasp what my life was or should have been,” Wardlow continued. “And even after I beat Max, the devil wasn’t gone. He still had his claws in my back. And the next night, here I am, Wardlow getting my name chanted by a sold-out crowd like we haven’t seen in decades. And the next (episode) I’m back to doing nothing and Max is dropping this bombshell of a promo and now the show’s still all about him. I beat him, but I didn’t beat him. So there’s a lot to be said there. All’s I’ll say is I’ll dance with the devil again, and that time will come and things will be a little different next time.”
He concluded, “I guess I have a lot to prove to myself and I have a lot of wrongs to right. And this opportunity with the TNT title gives me that. And after Sunday, I look to be calling myself Mr. Revolution. Because yes, last year it was the big ladder match, it was the moment with the ring. This year if I can recapture the TNT title… when I recapture the TNT title, I will be Mr. Revolution.”
The 35-year-old star then reflected on how his month away from TV finally offered him some clarity.
“I’ve been on the road, I’ve been injured, I have multiple torn muscles, I have multiple injuries that a lot of people don’t know about. I never took time off. Flying every week, hotels every week, it was all catching up to me maybe,” he said. “And so those four weeks looking at myself in the mirror with this hair, I used to have this haircut, and the last time I had this haircut I was a different person and I wasn’t a very good person. And I saw that man in the mirror and it made me realize like, ‘Hey, you reached behind you, took the devil’s claws out of your back before, you could do it again.’ And I had four weeks to heal and to think about everything, and it honestly changed my life. I am a completely different person than I was two months ago. I mean, it is wild the positive effect it had on me, and I’m just ready to unleash the evolved me.”
