Although the MJF situation started out as a shoot as he legitimate has issues with his contract in AEW and wants to be paid more money when his contract expires in 2024, it has now turned into a worked shoot storyline in All Elite Wrestling that is playing out on television.
Just like what Brian Pillman did in 1996 when he got his release from WCW to further push his loose cannon character all the while just trying to get a lucrative deal with WWE, there is confusion regarding what is real and what is just storyline.
Talent in the AEW locker room has largely been kept in the dark about the MJF situation as AEW President Tony Khan refused to talk about it with the media after Double Or Nothing.
Dave Meltzer reported in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that many wrestlers in the company believed it to be a work from the start. It was said that some people just played it off as it being wrestling, but “others weren’t so happy about it.”
Meltzer wrote, “one noted being very unhappy about it believing that playing games with talent and keeping executives in the dark on key issues was something they had hoped this company would never do, and one called it a sloppy work that in the long run will benefit nobody.”
One day after MJF did a promo on Dynamite where he called Khan a mark and demanded that he fire him, the promotion removed the top star from its roster and shop pages.
