Kevin Nash has reacted to high praise from reigning AEW World Champion MJF.
The comments started on the Shut Up and Wrestle podcast, where MJF credited Nash, the late Scott Hall, and their agent Barry Bloom for the mid-1990s jump from WWE to WCW that reset the market for guaranteed wrestler pay. MJF argued the entire industry is better off because of it.
“People love to sh** on Nash and Hall. They made professional wrestling for professional wrestlers healthier,” MJF said. “I don’t give a f*** what you think of the NWO or all the politics. Every wrestler should be very thankful for Barry Bloom, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.”
On the latest episode of his Kliq This podcast, Nash called the praise “kind” and returned it.
“I think he knows how much I appreciate him. So we’ve had conversations. I think he’s super talented,” Nash said of MJF.
When co-host Sean Oliver asked whether changing the economics of wrestling would be his legacy, Nash first deflected with a joke, saying it would “sure as f***” be “the sh** I did off the top rope.” He then turned more serious about how he has always approached the job:
“I’ve said it from day one. When you break in, it’s like, why is it they call it the business, but when you treat it like one, you’re a motherf***er? I’ve never went to work anywhere in my life and the bottom line wasn’t about getting paid. I want to get paid.”
Oliver also raised a listener’s theory that the NWO, and the real-life Kliq before it, served as something close to wrestling’s first union. Nash said the group changed the psychology of the era, pointing out the faction still moves a heavy volume of merchandise decades later.
Nash also pointed to MJF’s 2022 worked-shoot promo, in which MJF begged Tony Khan to fire him on AEW television. Nash said the segment fooled even him into thinking MJF wanted to leave for WWE:
“When he did the one where he was telling Tony Khan, ‘fire me, fire me, Tony, fire me,’ they cut his mic off. I was watching it live, and I just thought, man, he must want to go to f**ing New York. And I went, ‘oh f**k, man, you got me.'”
