Maxwell Jacob Friedman wants to go down as the greatest AEW World Champion of all-time.
He’s already the longest-reigning of all-time after his title defense against Kenny Omega.
“The Devil” spoke with Sports Illustrated for an interview this week, during which he spoke about his AEW World Championship reign and the significance of his recent match against “The Cleaner.”
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On his AEW title reign, and how he always knew he would have to face-off against Omega: “I want to be the best AEW champion. The only other person that came up in my mind was Kenny Omega. Here I was coming up on his reign, so I decided I needed to start needling this f—— guy. I needed to prove I am the most complete world champion in the history of AEW. Kenny is the best bout machine. Jon Moxley is this incredible brawler. Chris Jericho is an incredible linguist. All these guys are superb at a lot of things. But I can do it all. I can make you feel any feeling I want you to feel.”
On being incredibly grateful to Omega for helping launch AEW and for passing the torch to the next generation of wrestlers: “I wanted a match with Kenny Omega, the best in the world in a pay-per-view main event–but on free television because I’m salt of the earth. That is the best match in Collision history, and it’s one of the best matches in AEW history. It was a really big deal for the company, and it really felt like the handing of the baton of who the top dog, bell-to-bell is in AEW. I couldn’t be more grateful that Kenny gave me that opportunity.”
Check out the complete interview at SI.com.
