Bad Tracking
Bad Tracking
Maxwell Jacob Friedman (c) vs Mark Briscoe
July 2, 2026
The greatest and only true heel in professional wrestling beats a brave, albeit delusional, chicken farmer within an inch of his life.
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By Coach B
Maxwell Jacob Friedman is the greatest working heel professional wrestler alive. In the ring, on the mic, total package.
I understand how obnoxious that sounds.
The other reason I picked it: Mark Briscoe.
I loved the Briscoe Brothers. Mark is one of those guys who just feels like wrestling. Not a guy playing a wrestler. A wrestler. A little wild, a little weird, and absolutely a guy who will fight you in a Dothan, Alabama Denny’s for eye-balling him.
Seriously, don’t do it.
AEW putting this on first was smart. If you’re flipping channels and you see MJF and Mark Briscoe trying to remove pieces of each other, you might stay. No disrespect to the rest of the roster, blah blah blah, but MJF is the guy. He is a champion for a reason.
And in the event MJF suffers a loss anytime soon, I can only assume it will be because of an egregious referee error. Certainly nothing involving Mr. Friedman’s wrestling ability.
That’s just responsible journalism.
MJF starts the match already doing MJF things. Selling the knee. Ducking out. Flipping people off. Mouthing “fuck you” at someone who may have been a child, a dog, or both. Hard to say. He does not care.
That is what separates him. He is an actual heel. Not a cool heel. Not a wink-at-the-camera heel. MJF makes it clear he does not want you on his side.
And MJF as a babyface? No thank you. We need to cut that fucking noise out ASAP if it ever attempted again.
Briscoe is perfect for this because he looks like he is actually trying to fight him. There is blood early, the crowd is hot, and the whole thing has an old-school rhythm. MJF cheats. Briscoe keeps coming. MJF sells. Briscoe fires up. Nobody is sprinting to the next GIF.
Briscoe does two dives to the outside. The second one looks cleaner because he lands on his feet, but somehow I liked the uglier one more. It looked nastier. That probably does not make sense, but I know what I mean.
MJF flips Briscoe off the top rope onto the corner of the apron, and holy shit. I’m sure landing on a wrestling ring never feels great, but that looked like it hurt like a bastard.
A table comes out, because of course it does. MJF teases the crowd with it, gets them all worked up, then folds it back up and slides it under the ring.
Fantastic. Don’t give them what they want. Drink the boos in. That’s the job.
This is where MJF is at his best. Thumb to the eye. Foot on the rope at the last second. Pointing to the temple because he is truly smarter than everybody else.
Briscoe hits an insane elbow off the top through the table, and it looked awesome on camera!
Almost a three-count, but MJF gets his foot on the rope at the very last second.
Best in the business for a reason.
There are a bunch of false finishes, and they all work. Briscoe goes for the Jay Driller, MJF escapes, Briscoe keeps dragging his limp carcass around, and the match keeps building without turning into pure move spam.
That is the difference. It is violent, but it is not just violence. It has shape. It has timing. It has two guys who know exactly what they are doing.
Also, I watched without commentary, which is not a knock on the commentary team. I just watch most things that way now. Sports, wrestling, whatever. I like to just watch. Makes it easier to notice the little stuff, like MJF maybe telling Briscoe to follow him before I immediately decide he probably just said “fuck you.”
That’s what we’re going with.
Quick commercial complaint, because I am alive and have a pulse: I do appreciate AEW’s picture-in-picture. It is certainly better than paying for a subscription and then being rewarded with more commercials than anyone could reasonably imagine.
Not a curmudgeon, but the censorship thing is pretty funny at this point. They can’t catch the fucks. They can’t stop the middle fingers. There is blood everywhere. We have clearly given up, and honestly, good.
The kids have the internet. They know more about the search filter than any of us. So I’m just saying, maybe we can say fuck and show some blood. And if you can’t keep your eight-year-old away from it, that’s probably on you.
Unrelated note: I don’t have any children that I’m aware of, but I ignore calls from unknown numbers on Father’s Day just to be safe.
Moving on.
Mark Briscoe is one of those guys where I know he is not actually insane, but I do occasionally wonder. That is a compliment. I want my professional wrestler to seem like he might be a lunatic. Not dangerous to society. Just dangerous near folding chairs.
He makes the ugly stuff look ugly in the right way.
MJF, meanwhile, is in complete control. The beard, the blood, the cheap shots, the little pauses. This is the version. Psychopath Max. Werewolf Max.
People say MJF needs to go to WWE. No, he fucking doesn’t.
Here’s what happens if he goes to WWE: they change him, they sanitize him, and eventually somebody in a headset gets nervous about the parts that make him work.
Hard pass.
Briscoe comes off the top with a Mick Foley bang-bang elbow, and I still do not think Foley gets enough credit. I remember watching him crash onto concrete in WCW when I was about twelve. I was already figuring wrestling out by then, and even I remember thinking, “That can’t be good.”
Eventually, MJF wins, because justice still exists in this fallen world.
Is it a 10 pay-per-view match? Maybe not.
Is it a 10 TV match? Absolutely.
This was one of the better TV matches I’ve seen in a minute. It had blood, pace, heat, selling, violence, and an actual heel doing actual heel shit.
9.0/10, with a bullet.
For a TV opener, this was excellent.
Actual heel. Actual violence. Actual selling.
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