MJF has shared one of the most entertaining stories about his signature catchphrase — and it ends with a humbling realization that what he thought was an original creation may have been buried in his subconscious for years before he ever said it in front of a mirror. Speaking on Late Night Grin, the AEW World Champion walked through the moment he came up with “My name is Maxwell Jacob Friedman and I’m better than you and you know it” at 18 years old — and what happened three years later.
“I swear it came to me like God whispered in my ear. I got chills the second I said it in front of the mirror,” MJF recalled. The problem came when he rewatched one of his favorite childhood movies. “Three years go by. Dodgeball was one of my favorite movies growing up. I watched it. ‘Here at Globo Gym, we’re better than you, and we know it.’ And the second he said it, I went, ‘Oh f***. I’m not creative at all.'”
MJF Compares His Catchphrase Discovery to How Stand-Up Comedians Unknowingly Repeat Old Material
Rather than being embarrassed, MJF took a measured view of what happened — comparing it to the well-documented phenomenon of stand-up comedians unknowingly recycling material they absorbed years earlier. “There’s this weird thing that happens with stand-up comedians too, where they’ll say a joke fully thinking it’s their joke, and it turns out it’s from somebody else’s set that they watched a decade ago. I do think that’s what happened with the Dodgeball deal.” The story is a rare moment of genuine self-deprecation from one of wrestling’s most guarded and carefully constructed characters, and it lands all the better for its honesty.
