We are exactly two days away from AEW Double or Nothing. The timeline should be absolutely buzzing about the actual pay-per-view card. Fans should be fighting about who walks out with the gold. Instead, Matt Hardy decided to drop a casual pipe bomb on his podcast, claiming Maxwell Jacob Friedman is the absolute only person in wrestling who could pull off a match with Mick Foley in the year of our lord 2026.

Naturally, wrestling Twitter and Reddit instantly caught fire. You throw two polarizing names like that into the algorithm and it is basically raw meat in a shark tank. Hardy's logic makes a weird kind of sense if you squint really hard and forget about medical science. But the fans are split into three distinct, highly aggressive camps. Let's break down the absolute madness.

The Nostalgia Junkies

These are the sickos. The fans who still wear faded Cactus Jack shirts from 1998 and actively want to see blood on their television screens. Their argument is entirely built around the promotional build-up. Forget the actual bell ringing. Just give them four weeks of MJF standing in the middle of the ring, systematically destroying Mick Foley's entire legacy on a live microphone.

The prevailing sentiment on the major forums is that MJF is the ultimate psychological worker. He does not need to drop Foley on his neck with a sheer-drop brainbuster. He does not need to hit a sloppy Canadian Destroyer. He just needs to insult Foley's children, mock his missing ear, and maybe pull out a cheap shot with the Dynamite Diamond Ring when the referee turns his back.

They argue that Foley, even pushing sixty years old, can still bleed and throw a right hand better than half the current television roster. The hardcore enthusiasts want a cinematic match. Or maybe they just want a heavily smoke-and-mirrors arena brawl where MJF bumps like an absolute maniac for five minutes to make Foley look like a monster.

They want that pure nostalgia pop. And honestly, it is incredibly hard to argue that the crowd would not absolutely lose their minds hearing that car crash intro music hit one last time. It is a cheap pop, but Foley invented the cheap pop.

The Medical Board

Then we have the realists. The buzzkills who actually care about a human being's spinal column and quality of life. This camp is terrified. They look at Mick Foley hobbling down to the ring at local conventions and correctly point out that the man has already given enough of his body to this brutal business.

The dominant take on the squared circle subreddit is pure, unadulterated rejection. They do not want to see it happen under any circumstances. It does not matter if MJF is the safest, most careful worker on the planet. Foley's hips and knees are entirely shot. Taking even a basic hip toss at this stage of his life sounds like a medical emergency waiting to happen on live pay-per-view.

These fans are aggressively roasting Matt Hardy for even suggesting the idea. They bring up Hardy's own history of pushing through severe injuries and suggest maybe he is not the most objective judge of when a battered veteran should finally hang up the boots for good. It is a harsh criticism, but a completely fair one.

One highly upvoted thread pointed out that watching your childhood heroes struggle through a match at twenty percent speed is deeply depressing, not entertaining. They just want Foley to stay home. Count his royalty money. Maybe drop a funny video on Instagram every now and then. Just let the man rest in peace while he can still walk.

The Contrarian Smarks

Wrestling fans love to argue about hypothetical bookings. The third camp completely ignores Foley's health and attacks the core premise itself. Why MJF? If Foley is going to miraculously heal up for one final deathmatch, why waste it on a guy whose primary offensive weapon is a basic headlock takeover?

These are the fans screaming for Jon Moxley. Moxley literally worshipped Foley growing up. He built his entire unhinged persona off the Cactus Jack blueprint. A wildly violent, bloody brawl between Moxley and Foley in an exploding barbed wire cage is the fantasy booking that makes sense to their twisted minds.

Others throw Darby Allin into the mix. Darby is a certified lunatic who would gladly take every single dangerous bump in the match just to protect Foley. Darby throwing himself back-first through a pane of glass while Foley just stands there and watches is basically a five-star classic on paper.

Eddie Kingston gets mentioned too. Kingston would probably cry real tears in the ring if he got the chance to trade chops with his hero. The contrarians think Hardy picking MJF is just him trying to stir up podcast engagement. They respect MJF as a generational talent, but they do not buy him as the ultimate final foil for the Hardcore Legend.

The Brutal Reality of the Situation

So who is actually right in this massive internet argument? It pains me to say this because I love chaos, but the medical board takes the undisputed win here.

Mick Foley is a certified legend. He is on the Mount Rushmore of guys who sacrificed their physical well-being for our entertainment. He gave us the Hell in the Cell plunge in 1998. He gave us the Royal Rumble street fight in 2000. He does not owe us another drop of blood or another shattered tooth.

But let us entertain Matt Hardy's wild premise for just a second. If there was a gun to Tony Khan's head and this match absolutely had to happen tomorrow night, Hardy is completely right. MJF is the only logical answer.

Why? Because MJF is a coward. I mean that as the highest possible compliment a heel can receive. MJF wrestles a painfully slow, deliberate style that relies entirely on generating crowd heat.

If Foley gets in the ring with Moxley or Darby, the temptation to do something incredibly stupid and violently unnecessary is way too high. Someone is going through a flaming table. Someone is taking a bump onto a pile of thumbtacks. It is in their blood. They literally cannot help themselves.

MJF would spend ten solid minutes just running away. He would stall on the outside. He would beg off in the corner. He would fake a knee injury. He would poke Foley in the eyes. MJF is an absolute master at making doing absolutely nothing feel like the most important thing in the entire world.

He could walk Foley through a fifteen-minute match where the biggest, most dangerous bump is a simple back body drop, and the crowd would still eat out of the palm of his hand. MJF understands smoke and mirrors better than anyone of his current generation.

He knows exactly how to protect an older opponent while simultaneously making himself look like a total piece of garbage. He could carry a literal broomstick to a three-star match just by insulting the local sports team for five minutes before the bell rings.

Stop Fantasy Booking the Past

Will this match actually happen? Absolutely not. Foley has joked around on his own podcast about getting in shape for one last run, but the harsh reality of a severely battered man passing a rigorous medical physical in 2026 is slim to none.

We should probably spend our collective energy focusing on AEW Double or Nothing this weekend. There are real matches happening with people who actually have functioning cartilage in their knees. We need to stop fantasy booking a 59-year-old man into a main event bloodbath.

But you have to hand it to Matt Hardy. The man knows exactly how to get wrestling fans riled up and yelling at each other on a random Wednesday afternoon. He got us talking. He got the engagement.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go log onto Twitter. There is a guy in my mentions who genuinely thinks Mick Foley should wrestle Will Ospreay in a sixty-minute iron man match, and I need to go ruin his day.