Matt Hardy Thinks MJF’s Character Will Ultimately Benefit From Adam Cole’s Betrayal

Matt Hardy was impressed with MJF’s 406-day reign as the AEW World Heavyweight Champion.

During the latest episode of his official podcast, “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy,” the AEW star reflected on the AEW World Championship run of Maxwell Jacob Friedman and explained how he feels his character will ultimately benefit from Adam Cole’s betrayal.

Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.

On MJF’s 406-day reign as AEW World Champion and his match with Samoa Joe at AEW Worlds End 2023: “I dug it. I think MJF did a phenomenal job as champion, I thought he turned in a solid performance. Who knows truly how much he was hurt, he seems to be a little injured. They had a great match, he ends up losing the title to Samoa Joe. One thing that I did like a lot is that Samoa Joe got the title, exited, and then the angle happened afterward so he wasn’t wrapped up in that. I was a big fan of that specific booking. I love the fact that the guys show up and the whole way that they go into the Adam Cole thing, I thought it was very cool when they’re holding him and MJF still, until the very last moment before the reveal happens, he’s like, ‘Don’t you hit him, don’t you hit him you piece of shit, hit me, hit me.’ This guy has already lost everything and then he loses his best friend.”

On MJF blurring the lines when it comes to his injury status before noting that the persona of MJF will only benefit from Adam Cole’s betrayal: “I did too. I thought the match told a great story. I think there was such a blurred line on how much is Max truly hurt, or he is truly hurt? Is he hurt, is he not hurt, I don’t know! I don’t think anyone knows and he does a really good job at blurring the lines when it comes to stuff like that in storyline aspects. That made me think about how the match was going to play out, and considering that we knew he was hurt, he was beat down from having all of these championship defenses, I love the fact that the majority of the match was Joe and it was him dominating and it showed him fighting from underneath like a baby face the whole while and he still gets to be MJF, he still gets to be a scumbag in many, many ways but he still has that sympathy because he’s fighting back from underneath. They go through the finish, they do the deal, choke out, Joe is out and then we go into the next thing. I think the betrayal of Adam Cole to MJF is going to do something amazing for his character. I’m very excited to see how he eventually plays off of that, that is if he returns to AEW. His contract came up, apparently they took him off the website, is that correct? Who knows, he might show up in MLW, he might show up in IMPACT.”

Check out the complete episode of “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.