MJF Reflects on His Rivalry With CM Punk: "[He Was a] Mentor Through Hate"

MJF and Punk feuded from Fall 2021 until March 2022.

By Liam Crowley

MJF is the biggest homegrown star that AEW has produced. Upon the arrival of All Elite Wrestling in 2019, Maxwell Jacob Friedman was among the company's launch roster, and his immediate exposure made it clear that AEW had big plans for the young talent. Flash forward to the launch of AEW Dynamite in Fall 2019, and MJF was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cody Rhodes and Chris Jericho, raising his own personal stock in the process. All of this experience built MJF to higher and higher heights, but it wasn't until his feud with CM Punk that he became a made man.

Punk confronted MJF on a November 2021 edition of AEW Dynamite, and what followed was five months of the most intricate, layered, and personal storyline that AEW has ever produced. MJF handed Punk his first loss in AEW in February 2022. Punk got his win back at AEW Revolution the following month.

MJF Reflects on His Feud With CM Punk

CM-PUNK-AEW-COLLISION-MJF
(Photo: AEW)

The self-proclaimed generational talent looks back on his rivalry with the Second City Saint through a vitriolic lens.

Speaking to The Wrestling Classic on Casual Conversations, MJF described CM Punk as a "mentor through hate" when asked how he views his former adversary.

"I think I would use the word mentor through hate. I was mentored by probably two of the most intelligent guys in the business," MJF said, alluding Cody Rhodes as his other mentor. "One was through love, and one was through hate."

While MJF vs. Punk remains one of the greatest wrestling feuds of the modern era, it will also go down as one of wrestling's biggest what ifs. All signs pointed to MJF and Punk capping off their trilogy at AEW All Out 2022 with the AEW World Title on the line, but Punk's ill-timed foot injury put a pause on those plans. Instead, AEW crowned Jon Moxley as Interim AEW World Champion, and when Punk was cleared to compete just three weeks before AEW All Out, AEW ran a relatively rushed Moxley vs. Punk to determine an undisputed champion. MJF, who had spent that whole summer sitting out to sell him "walking out" of AEW, returned at the end of the pay-per-view to confront Punk, signaling that he was coming for Punk's AEW World Title.

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Fate would play tricks once more, as Punk tore his tricep in that match against Moxley and was shelved for the next nine months, resulting in him being stripped of his gold. During that time, MJF would capture the AEW World Championship on his own.

When Punk returned to AEW in Summer 2023, he brought his AEW World Title with him, proclaiming himself to be the "real world champion" due to the fact that he was never beaten for the prize. The endgame of this "real world champion" storyline seemed to be a unification bout against MJF, but Punk was fired before that could come to fruition.

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