Wrote this in the hours after All Elite Wrestling’s “Double or Nothing” Pay Per View show, so the tense below is nine days previous as of posting.

Going into this, take in account that this is presented from the perspective of someone who wants AEW to succeed and generally enjoys the product.

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On Sunday, May 24, at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, All Elite Wrestling’s (AEW) top bad guy Maxwell Jacob Friedman became the first three-time men’s world champion in the company’s history. Putting his hair on the line, he won the title back from champion Darby Allin after losing in short order a few weeks ago. To the chagrin of the fans, MJF kept his prized hair, a stipulation that had garnered heightened interest in the show.

The win was without controversy. MJF, despite being a bad guy, was proven right in that Darby’s breakneck schedule of title defenses every week would catch up to him. In the story AEW told, MJF is a genius and Darby, though well-intentioned, fell as was foretold by the bad guy.

It’s not the first time an AEW Pay-Per-View ended with MJF on top. In fact, it has happened four straight PPVs, including all three in 2026. And by the rules of each match, MJF won relatively cleanly without a ton of cheating. The match he won the title was a four-way with no disqualifications; he won a barbaric Texas Death Match over Hangman Adam Page and bested Kenny Omega in a regular title defense. All four of those matches ended their respective PPVs.

That means four straight PPVs of great wrestling ending on a whimper of MJF winning, yet again. This follows the Southern wrestling booking strategy of building up as much anger as possible to make the good guy winning in the end worth it.

The problem with a constant top bad guy winning is on an emotional attachment level. AEW wants new fans and to grow. They need to sell tickets. MJF has been doing the same act on national TV since late 2019. That’s over six years, with some breaks in between, of the same act, week in and out. When the same bad guy keeps winning to end the PPVs, it doesn’t matter how great Konosuke Takeshita vs Kazuchida Okada was or how fun Stadium Stampede is. The taste in the mouth of people who purchase a PPV or a ticket is a sigh of disappointment. Do they really want to buy the next PPV to have the bad win in the end again?MJF will go on Dynamite and cut a gloating promo, as Ric Flair did in the 80s, like Hollywood Hulk Hogan would do in the late 90s and Triple H would do in the 2000s. Those eras had their limits as well and they were all shorter than six years.

Pro wrestling is a distraction from everyday life, a distraction from the horrors of potential war, economic strife and lawlessness in government. Want to escape? Turn on ESPN on a weekday morning and Stephen A. Smith and his rotating cast of professional yellers are angry at something. Talk radio is angry. Work can be draining. The last thing many people need to have happen is for the bad guy to win the morality play in tights. 

MJF is an incredible character, don’t get me wrong. But he is one note. A note that AEW and Tony Khan play over and over because of MJF’s loyalty and sticking to kayfabe (keeping the illusion up outside of the show). The MJF character might comment on this piece about my physical appearance, or that I’m a bad writer or whatever cheap insult he will find. MJF is the safety valve of AEW, one that is being worn out more often the more he’s used to beating the top good guys.

In my opinion, pro wrestling’s good guys should win at least 75% of the time. The bad guys should always want to cheat and be the first to give up when the going gets tough. How does a bad guy return from this? They can talk. One promo and the fans are booing them again. All for the next good guy to beat them. 

If the schoolhouse bully gets beaten up by one kid, then starts picking on another kid the next week and there’s another fight again, you’re going to still watch to see if the bully gets beaten up again. You’ll never get tired of watching a Death Star get blown up.

Going forward, ex-champ Darby Allin now has a new enemy after TNT Champion Kevin Knight turned on him post-match, adding insult to injury. Thus, we’ll get another predictable MJF title reign utilizing his five heel moves of doom: denying title matches, putting a gauntlet of hired guns in front of a potential challenger, invoking families, the cheap heat of cutting down the city they’re in and its sports teams, and one that seems likely to be repeated: zingoism. 

MJF seems destined to defend his title versus the UK’s Will Ospreay at Wembley Stadium on Aug. 30, AEW’s biggest show of the year. It won’t be the first time they’ve faced off at Wembley, with Ospreay winning in 2024. That time, MJF played up the “Captain America” persona, something he has repeated in Mexico multiple times. It seems destined that we’ll get more xenophobic MJF promos leading up to what should be an Ospreay title win in his home country. It’ll be a great moment, but the road there now seems predictable and monotonous.