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Jay's biggest hurdle in adapting to AEW isn't the truthfully subpar booking, but the actual crowd and audience he has to deal with. He was brilliant in Japan because his foil was the Japanese themselves, as he had carte blanche to mock them and disrespect them as much as he could, and they were responsive enough to truly rally against his shithousery. He was feuding with whatever it is that the Japanese were representing, and that included the babyface heros who were proudly carrying those values with them. He will always deserve the acclaim he gets for getting as much heat as possible out of a clap-crowd, and getting them involved into every match. Hell, that even was a part of his world title run, as he beat Okada because the crowds were limited in their interaction, and he immediately lost once they fully got back into the mold.
The problem is he can't any of that shit in America, because the stuff that really gets under the crowd's skin would get him fired in an instant. He can't get too deep with the disrespect, even in pure kayfabe, because the talent would cry about ''getting buried''. It's an audience that prefers buying into the meta-ironic vision of wrestling where their feeling cannot be hurt, which really could be wonderfully worked into the feud against the poster of everything AEW stands for, MJF the parody of a heel, but will never happen due to an overwhelming case of thin skin. Imagine a promo where somebody would rip into Max's crutch of using overdramatized bullshit ''mental illnesses'' to get the sympy of the people. Can't be a proper heel anymore.
No wonder wrestling is dead.
