#overanalyzing mjf

[mjfass]

MJF's biggest feud will always be with the audience. He'll always struggle with the fact that he'll never be "loved" the way other people like Ospreay and Hangman are loved.

[marq-lynch]

Man I expected this week to be on the 'Hangman Did Hella Wrong (/affectionate)' train, but I didn't anticipate reigniting my MJF Defender tendencies so let's go!

You make an excellent point I'd like to dig into more which is that while Hangman's lows are now far lower than MJF's, his highs are not as High, and you specifically point out the timeline they have for both those things!

So I want to bring up the idea of Equity vs Equality, which I think MJF tried to do in his promo, but bless his heart, he's cried wolf so many times we tune it out now. 'You were handpicked with the silver spoon and every opportunity, I came in with a scarf and a microphone'.

MJF is the short guy who started life standing in a shoulder deep pit, getting bullied, and being bitter about the view. He climbs his way out of the pit, and saw tall guys standing around, some of them provided soapboxes to get a better view. Hangman is one of those guys.

Now early Hangman I would say? Had a fear of heights, and got off the soapbox provided, tripped, and fell in a shallow ditch for a little while until someone helped him back up and he climbed back up on that box himself. But now? Now he's off, he's torn the box to shreds, using the planks to dig himself a hole deep enough to hide in standing up.

So when MJF has climbed out of his own little pit he's been in his whole life, onto a soap box, gotten a taste of the view, and then gotten knocked back down to the ground within six months of ever climbing out? He's only 5'8", He looks a lot shorter than he is, but man... Proportionally he did a lot more work, and he was down there for a long time, with very little help. And he's not going back in his pit. But everyone is making fun of him just for standing on the surface now. So why not just say 'fuck all of you' and sit down on a soapbox instead?

Because Max really has improved. He's done the work and gotten no credit, and the shocking part is, except for a few minor frustrated and very reasonable 'oh but HANGMAN did nothing wrong' type complaints about the injustice of the world? He is better. Not Better Than You, maybe, but he's been doing the work, you can tell. He's matured. That promo he cut against Roderick a while back screamed months of therapy, and more often than not now you see him simply bite his tongue to shreds and grin when he clearly wants to escalate and retort, most often calling someone out on their bullshit or hypocrisy.

He still snaps, he still has his fallbacks, but oh man... He's been doing the thing that Hangman should be doing: trying to improve himself and his career instead of starting drama and spiraling. And he's doing it quietly, because unlike Hangman, there is no Elite left for him to push away, or Christopher Daniels to offer him a hand to slap aside in anger. There's just him, and another round of public humiliations he gets to smile through as he bites scar tissue into his cheeks.

i'm still chewing on that like i think hangman's lows are lower than mjf's. i think hangman right now is like straight up maniacal but i think he only really got that way in the last year and a half or so because of like dedicated concerted psychological torture. and not to say that he was EVER mentally well because he absolutely wasn't but i think that pushing all your friends away and becoming an alcoholic is kind of pedestrian compared to actually burning down a guys childhood home because you let your anger consume you. but just like hangman at his lowest is worse than mjf at his lowest i think that hangman at his healthiest was probably healthier than mjf at his best i think he's kind of always been doing pretty terrible. so i think it depends on if you're counting like historical worsts or kind of taking a lifetime average

[paladinnether]

ya know, at first i was hesitant to get on board with the mjf/ospreay feud because it's just the millionth "american patriot vs foreigner" type thing, but i actually kinda love it. they turned it on its head and made it unique

mjf is "an american hero" and "a patriot" but talks shit on america at the same time, insulting the crowd and all that. like he has no idea what the american dream is, just his own twisted version of it. the american is actually the heel for once

will and kyle understand it so much more than mjf does because they're foreigners, they dreamed of coming to america. and they're the good guys, they will fight for those ideals.

god these matches are gonna cook.

[mobiblackout]

Making this edit got me thinking about how much of BTYBB friendship was built on platonic physical intimacy and how much this was a huge part of the plot.

Like Max never initiated any type of physical contact besides violence with anyone by the start of their rivalry, but he was very touchy feely with Adam from the get go.

On the other hand Adam always let his close friends kiss and hug him, it was even part of his gimmick in superkliq, but at the start he was really serious about "boundaries" in his friendship with Max.

They broke all those physical boundaries within that friendship in the end, Max never held back from hugging him or burying his face into his neck, he kissed him on the temple and proudly posted the picture on his socials.

If everything was a plan from the start, was playing hard to get at first but then letting Max to be as close as possible to him, knowing fully this is the first time Max is experiencing such thing with a friend and everything about their hugs and kisses is novel to Max and he probably is exploding with so much excitement and love every time it happens is going to make it harder once he takes that away from Max so suddenly, a part of the plan too?

[comediakaidanovsky]

sometimes i think about how punk wrote his livejournal of shitty jokes and young people melodrama and how he doesn’t wash off the blood after a match because it’s romantic and how him and bryan have the same taste in bathroom etiquette and men and how he’s just left it up all of these years, and i think about how you can just scroll back through mjf’s instagram as the posts get more and more genuine until it’s just a kid following his dream to become a wrestler, and i’m so fascinated by the history keeping, about how they keep every iteration of themselves alive

[maxwelljacobfriedman]

Ariel: Does AEW need CM Punk?

MJF: No comment...What I will say is me and CM Punk had the greatest feud in the history of the company, and I do honestly think it will go down as one of the greatest feuds of all time...um, yeah.

[traitorestraven]

actually! kinda fascinating how all of the older men that become obsessed with mjf do so in a way that's proprietary. they all want to have or have had a hand in making him, even Punk, who's the only of MJF's line of enemies/mentors to be antagonistic to him from the start. Cody's sentimentality towards MJF is all wrapped up in the idea that he found this diamond in the rough kid and saw something in him no one else could, and this gave him special insight into who MJF was as a person that even the audience--which sees everything--didn't have. Jericho wanted a second Sammy Guevara, a rising star he could control in order to keep himself at the top. Punk literally tied them together with a chain. setting aside any fan interpretations (gay shit), it's an interesting theme to have surrounding a character whose express purpose is to be as repulsive as possible!

[puzzle-paradigm]

So I was thinking about this promo and my own experiences as a Jewish person, and even though it isn't really recent or relevant anymore, more than one (2!) people expressed interest in hearing my thoughts, and apparently that's enough for me, so buckle up.

So before I talk about The Big Noticeable Thing, I wanted to talk about Jewish representation in media a little more generally. First of all, could there be criticisms about MJF's "rich asshole" character as it intersects with Jewish stereotypes? Yeah, probably. But right now I'm trying to focus more on the positives.

There is a certain character type Jewish people (specifically Jewish men) fall into in media: Sidekicks, passive, wishy-washy, weak, comedic relief, and, unless the movie is about the Shoah, almost never the driving force behind the story. So I'll admit, seeing a Jewish man who so effectively bucks those stereotypes- Aggressive, angry, talented, and a hugely powerful driving force- it made me happy. It's a way I rarely see people like me, and especially not in media for Goyish audiences- hang on to that last part, it'll come up again later.

So, onto The Big Deal- the quarters story. So, minor confession, I didn't watch the episode that this promo is from-I didn't really have access to a tv at the time. But the second it came out on youtube, one of my friends sent me a link with the message "You're going to want to see this."

As soon as I heard the words "rolls of quarters" my stomach sank, because I knew exactly how the story was going to end. Not going to go into too much detail, but I have a similar story (Freshman year of high school, cafeteria, pennies, "Pick it up, Jew"), and I know plenty of other Jews who share it. It's a common experience. To this day I don't pick up money I find on the sidewalk if there is anyone around, and I can directly trace why right back to that time in the high school cafeteria.

I wasn't shocked that he'd had that experience (regardless of if you think it was dramatized, I don't doubt for a second that something like that happened). Like I said, plenty of Jews have, more than you probably think. What shocked me was that it was being talked about. I have never seen an experience like this talked about on tv, and especially not so frankly, and doubly so for a goyish audience. For the first time, pretty much ever for me, someone was talking about my experience in public. They were talking about it, without couching or softening it or making it palatable so the goyim don't think we're complaining.

And the crowd booed him. The crowd listened to his (and my, and my parents' and my friends') story and decided the appropriate response to someone sharing an experience of antisemitism- dramatized or fictionalized or not- and they decided that was something that needed to be mocked and shouted down. One of the commentators (I don't recall who, and I'm not going to go and check) even remarked that they were making the wrong choice doing that.

As a Jewish person, that sends a pretty clear message: People don't care, and it shouldn't be talked about. It's not exactly a new thing to see-people have told me antisemitism isn't real, directly to my face and in real life- but I won't say that I wasn't surprised.

I don't know. There's not really a neat way to come up with a conclusion. On one hand I'm glad that this sort of thing was said, but on the other, I'm still disappointed in the reaction. I've probably embarrassed myself by rambling, but I had a lot of thoughts, and hopefully I did a decent job of explaining.

I guess I just feel like this was important, in a way that is really hard to put into words, but if you've experienced it you know- representation really does matter, even when that representation is a rich, egotistical asshole.

[knickynoo]

hello! just wanted to say that I am personally sO happy to have you in bttf/mjf fandom and to read your posts which are always brilliant and do not feel like plain posts on the Internet, but rather real excerpts from top tier reviews!! thank you so much for everything you do here~ please pardon my english and take care ❤️

Wow, WOW. All these kind words are totally making my day. Thank you, Kai! I've said it before, but I'm blown away that people like these rambling essay-length posts about movies from 30+ years ago lol. I'm constantly overanalyzing the things I read/watch, so this place is a great outlet for me to put some of my thoughts. I'm so glad you enjoy my posts and love when you contribute your own thoughts/humor to them. It always makes me smile.

Also, your english is fantastic! No worries. =)

[cinnamongeek]

[mjfass]

[marq-lynch]

I'm Monty, got into wrestling in June 2024. Trying not to give into tribalism but man I just don't like WWE. My OG main blog where I like and follow from is thealexandriaarchives, out of nostalgia, but most places these days you can find me as Montager. Absolute Sicko which means if you're a TERF, SWERF, or think that fiction influences reality and censorship is good even in moderation we will have problems. 18+ only, I don't tag for blood or violence but anything involving suicidal ideation, child death, or other extreme asks, etc. CM Punk is a gateway drug and a princess, which means he did do all those things your honor, both he and the monarchy are a scourge on society we should ultimately abolish and rise above, but for now he has diplomatic immunity as we shake our heads and read the daily dirtsheets to find his lewds. Shuffled Queue Tag runs as: #Do Queue Know The Muffin Man Sometimes I am on the liveblogs with: #Dynamite lb, #Collision lb, & when I remember #Rampage lb. I'm in the WA Seattle area so HMU if you wanna grab a drink or something before WrestleDream week or a Defy show.

#Monty Mouths Off - Meta & Misc

Strickly StrickPage:

Underappreciated StrickPage Moments at Blood & Guts 2024

The 'Go Home to Your Wife' Promo Rewired My Brain

The 1st Song on Swerve's new Album sure is something huh

Swerve's' Rope-Circle Gold Pendant in his Childhood Home Promo

Hangman's Delight at Being Able to Destroy vs Swerve's Repeated Attempts to Pull Back

StrickPage Fan Poetry after Dynamite 9.4.2024

#Overanalyzing MJF:

Fucked up fact the ring was stolen a week after I wrote THIS post

Can people stop TURNING THE RING DOWN

You hear that guys? He's the feeling. HE'S the feeling.

Did I restore the feeling now, huh? Is This Your Boy?

Life changed for me at 27

So you're MJF...

I need Miss Havisham MJF. That is all.

MJF tries to Improve, cannot, narrative denies him escape because he is stuck in a time loop, becomes worse. I love it.

Other Wrasslin' Nonsense:

As a fellow Sadist Jack Perry did nothing wrong at All In

Oh to be in the All In Locker Room with Christian Cage...

Mariah May is Not Human and I Stand By This

Getting People into AEW Shows & Why Collision Fucks

Actually it's very hard to get people into wrestling if they aren't already and let me explain why with a video essay that does so fantastically using my beloved Nigel McGuinness

Story of the first ever three way kiss on wrestling tv and why it matters AEW is doing it now.

#Montager.mov - Fanvids

(maniac.mov - #StrickPage)

(pigtails.mov - #JungleCorpse)

[mjfass]

"When you listed all of your accomplishments you sounded angry about it. All of that and you can't be happy".

[mjfass]

MJF playing Hangman’s music first so he could know what it feels like to be loved and cheered like that, even if just for a moment.

[mjfass]

MJF is for the girlies (gn) who feel like they are never enough. For the ones who have never been a first choice. For the ones who try and try but it never seems to work out for them.

[mjfass]

October 12, 2022 / February 19, 2024