Tony Khan made an appearance on Wrestling with Freddie to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, the AEW President reflected on the first time he saw MJF:
“The first time I saw him was on MLW. That summer of 2018 was really big for me. The only people that really first took this seriously were Matt Jackson and Chris Jericho. I talked to both of them almost every day. From there, they brought in a lot of other really good people. Obviously, Matt brought Nick, his brother, and his wife, Dana runs our merchandising, and she’s a big part of the company too, and then obviously, with Kevin, Kenny Omega and Cody Rhodes. When I went to talk to Matt, I wanted to get the Bullet Club together, especially in particular, the Elite with Matt, Nick and Kenny, which I thought was the best trio in the world. I really saw Kenny coming in as a singles headliner, and Matt and Nick as the top tag team, and I wanted to get Jericho. The business case, I knew there were a couple things happening. So let me go back to MJF who was the person you asked about and that’s the person we’re focusing on here. But the way I found him was on MLW. I was watching a ton of wrestling, and other people liked him too. Once I started talking to Cody, Cody brought up that he thought that would be great. In my scouting, he was one of the first people I saw outside of that group of names I just mentioned.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription