MJF Says He Met Cody Rhodes For The First Time After He Told Ethan Page That He Was Hitting On His Sister

MJF recalls meeting Cody Rhodes for the first time.

The history between Friedman and Rhodes runs deep, but as it turns out, their first interaction was an argument about Ethan Page’s sister.

On a recent episode of Shut Up And Wrestle, MJF said that Rhodes told Ethan Page that he was hitting on his sister.

“The very first time I met Cody Rhodes was at Alpha-1 in Canada. He had told the promoter, who may or may not be Ethan Page, that I was hitting on his sister. Granted, I wouldn’t put it past me, but I actually wasn’t. The sister of Ethan Page.”

After an interaction with Page, MJF decided to go straight to “the source”.

“Ethan Page walks up to me and goes, ‘Hey man, are you fucking hitting on my sister?’ I said, ‘Buddy, if I was, you would know, she’d be my girlfriend by now.’ Then we got into it a little bit and I was just like, ‘Who told you this?’ He goes, ‘Cody told me this.’ I had two options. I could just eat it, which 99.9% of talent in my position at that point at 19 years old who was an absolute fucking nobody would have done. Or, I could confront this guy, who at the time and also now was a big fucking deal in the business.

Friedman went on to detail his interaction with Rhodes.

“So, because I’m an unwell person, I chose the latter. I walked into his locker room, he had his own locker room at this fucking place. I didn’t knock on the door, I just opened it and I said, ‘Hey.’ He’s looking at me in disbelief. I go, ‘Why the fuck did you tell the booker I’m trying to bang his sister?’ He was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I go, ‘Dude, please don’t make me bring Ethan down here, he’ll collaborate.’ He starts laughing and he goes, ‘Who are you, man?’ Then we just started shooting the shit. From that moment on, I could tell he got a kick out of me because, especially on the independent level, was probably not used to people talking like that. He’ll be the first person to tell you, Cody Rhodes loves a good white lie, he says it all the time.”

Rhodes ended up caving in to the idea of MJF.

“What ended up happening was a couple weeks after that, we were at NEW, Mike Lombardi’s promotion. He sees me, his eyes bulge out and he goes, ‘I don’t get it.’ I go, ‘What don’t you get?’ He goes, ‘You’re fucking booked everywhere. I guess I’m gonna have to watch you tonight.’ After that, we always stayed in touch and that’s legitimately how I got booked for All In, just because Cody was so shocked. I had no right to be booked for all the shows I was booked for, but I was everywhere.”

Elsewhere in the interview, MJF put over Lio Rush and his recent character change. Check out his full comments here.

If you missed anything from the June 17 episode of AEW Dynamite, catch up on the show by clicking here.

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