What we thought of the end result of Worlds End — the MJF loss, The Devil reveal, whether or not you think the Matt Tavens of the world are supposed to be intimidating figures, WHATEVER; it all matters not. The pre-entrance vignette for “The King of Long Island,” Maxwell Joseph Friedman, was everything. From local shops and monuments, to local advocates touting his superlatives, to an old girlfriend who he ****** for however long in a car behind the wherever back in whenever, it has never been more clear than it is right now that MJF is Long Island’s scumbag, AEW’s scumbag, our scumbag, and sure, my scumbag too.

Full disclosure: I’m a Long Island product myself. The pride that comes from that area, I believe, can only be understood by those who have felt its soil underneath their feet from the earliest of ages. They, we, are a unique people. Hubris is commonplace. MJF exemplifies as much. Humility comes later. Max showed a bit of the latter through some of this babyface run with a heavy dose of the former always overriding it all, a quality befitting of his character and in step with what he was putting forth all the while.

That this pay-per-view emanated from the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, once dubbed “Fort Neverlose” during the dynasty run of the New York Islanders from 1980-83, is also ironic in that MJF, assuming he’s staying put in AEW, will now have to battle back from the biggest loss he’s suffered in quite some time. Until then, he did his fellow Long Islanders proud tonight, and throughout his title run, as he did scumbags across the globe. Where and how he proceeds from here following the post-match beating, of course, remains up in the air.

Written by Jon Jordan