MJF Doesn't Plan To Re-Sign With AEW Before His Contract Expires
When MJF’s contract expires, there’s a chance we could see him elsewhere
MJF has made no secret of his desires to be the top star in all of wrestling, with ‘the Salt of the Earth’ making numerous references that his future could be away from AEW.
It’s no surprise then that Friedman has once again been talking about his future, telling Ariel Helwani that he doesn’t plan on re-signing with AEW before his contract expires:
"I'm not signing s***. No shot. It's not a test if you know you're going to win. I got the cheat code. I got the answers on a piece of paper. No, that's not something I consider, unless the number was absolutely astronomical, but even then, I'm not sure I consider it,” said MJF.
As for what that ‘astronomical figure’ could be, MJF wasn’t willing to set a number:
"That's not something I'm willing to discuss, but if you see what the top guys in our industry make, that's cool, but I want to make more than that.”
In the end, it all comes down to that bottom line for MJF:
"Now, I'm not a wrestling fan anymore. I'm a professional wrestler. Keyword, professional,” MJF continued. “My whole deal is, I can't look at it that way. 'Oh boy, I hope I get to do WrestleMania. Oh boy, I hope I main event a pay-per-view.' None of that stuff means anything to me. All I care about is the bottom line. Right now, the most important thing is winning that AEW World Title. Not because, 'look at the lineage,' I could give a s***. If I win that World Title, what does that mean? It means you have to pay me more money. When I win, I get a bigger bonus, because it's a championship defence.
“This is the stuff people forget about. People don't understand that there are winner's purses. If you win, you make more money, if you lose, you make less money. That's why we're wrestling. We're not wrestling for a sense of pride, if anybody tries to tell you that's the case, they're full of s***. I don't wrestle because I love professional wrestling, I wrestle because it makes me money. That's why I want to be the AEW World Champion. That's why the fact that Cody Rhodes is going over there, that's great, good for him, but I wouldn't leave there because of anything else but money. I would not leave where I'm at right now for anything else but money.”
When MJF’s contract expires it is sure to cause a bidding war, but you’d expect that Tony Khan has already made overtures about re-signing MJF to a long-term deal:
"I'm not going to get into that, but I'm sure you can imagine that Tony Khan, who is a billionaire, a very intelligent man, he's doing everything he can to make sure that his heaviest hitter is sticking around," he said.
H/T: Fightful