{"id":160502474,"date":"2019-05-28T03:52:26","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T03:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=160502474"},"modified":"2026-08-14T03:07:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T03:07:42","slug":"jon-moxley-has-a-lot-to-say-on-wwe-aew-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/?p=160502474","title":{"rendered":"Jon Moxley Has a Lot to Say on WWE, AEW & More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jon Moxley, formerly known as Dean Ambrose while in WWE, has turned the wrestling world on its head this week. Moxley debuted for brand new company AEW (All Elite Wrestling), attacking Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega after their main event match, followed that up with an announcement that he had also signed to wrestle for New Japan Pro Wrestling and then finally, appeared on Chris Jericho\u2019s \u201cTalk is Jericho\u201d podcast, giving an interview nobody who listened will soon forget. Despite all that, Moxley still has a lot to say and I was fortunate enough to spend an hour speaking with him about a wide variety of topics. Be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG<\/strong>: In less than one week, you debuted for AEW, announced that you had signed with New Japan, and had a major interview with Chris Jericho come out that has the entire world talking. How are you feeling after this week?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong> Feeling pretty good. Feeling like I\u2019m right where I\u2019m supposed to be sitting. The podcast seemingly got a bigger reaction than I thought it would. I didn\u2019t know if the response would be positive or negative but I didn\u2019t really care. I had things I needed to say and I tried to do it in the most objective way possible. I tried to emotionally detach from it, which is very difficult to do sometimes when you\u2019re telling some of these stories. I\u2019m happy people liked it. You never know if people are going to judge you or make up their own opinion but I didn\u2019t care. I didn\u2019t want to come off as ungrateful to the WWE, the universe, the Gods, or whatever God you choose to believe in that blessed me with all of these things that I have. My wife and I have a very nice home and I don\u2019t have to be financially dependent on WWE anymore. I\u2019m grateful that they gave me the opportunity to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want anyone to think that I\u2019m a snotty, entitled kid or anything but some of these stories you wouldn\u2019t believe \u2014 some of these stories about how WWE works are so unbelievable. Somebody has got to say this stuff and there are so many people in WWE that can\u2019t. I can. It\u2019s the giant elephant in the room that\u2019s screaming \u201cHELLO\u201d. Everyone knows that everything we\u2019re doing is stupid but we\u2019re still doing it. Something has to happen there. I couldn\u2019t help it from the inside. I tried but they all think I\u2019m some kind of idiot, but I saved all my money so who\u2019s the idiot now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> The obvious comparison to you on \u201cTalk is Jericho\u201d is CM Punk on Colt Cabana\u2019s podcast. A lot of people wondered if we would be getting something similar but I think they were drastically different. You didn\u2019t burn bridges; you told the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> A bridge is never burnt in WWE. Vince [McMahon] would have me back tomorrow and would love it if I came crawling back to him. I think Punk had a lot more personal animosity towards WWE and specific people. I don\u2019t know every detail of his story and I haven\u2019t spoken to him since he left WWE. His experience drove him to not like wrestling anymore, I think. For me, I wanted the exact opposite. I just got pro wrestling back after losing it years ago. I\u2019m like \u201cWhoa, I\u2019m back in the game, here we go!\u201d I wanted to make sure that people knew that there\u2019s no bitterness and that my love of wrestling and my desire to perform for the fans, my desire to meet and exceed their expectations, and my love for the fans has only gotten bigger. They have stayed with me through thick and thin and they\u2019re going to follow me wherever I go. Now they\u2019re AEW fans. They can still be WWE fans but they\u2019re AEW fans too. Not trying to come off as arrogant but that\u2019s a lot of fans that are now following AEW. We\u2019re garnering a huge fan base and we\u2019ve only done one show. It just so happens that the one show we\u2019ve done was fucking awesome. Even if this whole thing goes fucking tits up and we never run another show, that was one helluva show. But we\u2019re going to run more shows, a lot of shows. We\u2019re running a show June 29th in Daytona Beach, Florida, me vs Joey Janela. That\u2019s a beautiful, ugly mess [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> It\u2019s been a long time since you\u2019ve been outside of the WWE. What was it like being in a non-WWE locker room after all these years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> I wasn\u2019t in the locker room. I was hiding all day. A lot of these people I still haven\u2019t had a chance to meet yet. I did get to meet some after the show. For me, the experience creatively, the collaboration [pauses] I text Cody and told him that when I was coming back from the ring to make sure he had a camera guy follow me to get a backstage promo in the hall. As I\u2019m coming back from the ring, there\u2019s a camera guy. Not a crew, there wasn\u2019t a producer and a writer there too along with a boom mic guy. It was one guy following me down the hall with a camera and he points the camera at me, hits record and two minutes later, we have a promo. No writer, no fancy lighting. [Raises voice] Point the camera at me and press record! Done, two minutes. Did another thing with Joey Janela for The Young Bucks show. They had an idea, I said cool, added a little to it and three minutes later, we have another promo. They had another idea; three minutes later, we have a third promo. In ten minutes backstage at AEW, we knocked out three quality promos that would\u2019ve taken a whole day in WWE. A ten-second shot can take an hour with all the setup. If someone walks by, we would have to shoot it over. Everything\u2019s got to be so perfect. If you were interviewing Phil Jackson at halftime of a basketball game and someone walked behind you, it doesn\u2019t ruin the interview. He\u2019s just a guy in the background. It\u2019s real sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In AEW, I think we\u2019re going to have a lot more of that feel. It might not be super pretty and slick. Sometimes I feel like WWE is so well produced that it takes me out of it. We walk through matches so many times before a major show, plan out every camera shot, every facial. There\u2019s no rawness to it; it\u2019s too well done. I like when cameras are trying to keep up with the action. They don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen and it makes it seem so frantic, especially in a Young Bucks match or something like that. So what if they missed a shot, we\u2019ll get it on replay. It happens all the time in real sports. Sometimes a gruesome injury will happen and the camera misses it because it wasn\u2019t part of the main play. So they go back and show a replay and you get the closeup and react then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> In 2009, 2010, you were the best promo guy in the business. To hear you say on Jericho\u2019s podcast that you fell out of love with promos really sucked to hear. Is that passion coming back?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> 100%. My filing cabinet of ideas for promos, angles, concepts, moves, and big and small ideas got emptied out the moment I left WWE. Everything I had before WWE is lost. Everything I had as Dean Ambrose or as a Shield guy, is lost. I shit-canned all that shit. I\u2019m starting over. My cabinet was empty, but it is filling up quickly. I can\u2019t wait to start getting this stuff out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> The independent wrestling scene is completely different than when you left in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> It\u2019s a whole different world. I never made any money back then, before I came to WWE. You would\u2019ve thought I was some kind of hot deal on the indies, but I was making max, $100, $125 a night, driving all over the country. I only made money if I did a deathmatch. That\u2019s when I started bartering my health for money. Oh if you want light tubes, that\u2019s an extra $200. If you want a bunch of blood, that\u2019s an extra $100. If you want me to take a bump on barbed wire, that\u2019s $500. My point is, the indy scene is totally different now. There\u2019s Impact, Ring of Honor, New Japan is awesome now. Indy wrestling used to seem so bottom of the barrel. You would so rarely see a huge show but now I feel like you see a huge indy show every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I watched All In<\/em> last year, I didn\u2019t know half of the guys. I had never seen them work before. I was gone a long time, eight years, in the WWE bubble with blinders on and that\u2019s a thick bubble man. Three hundred days a year, no break, your body\u2019s hurt. It\u2019s hard to explain the intensity of a Monday Night Raw<\/em>. People running up to you in a panic saying we need to do this, this, and this before the show even starts. \u201cWe need to do a promo, Vince doesn\u2019t like this line, oh we need to get that approved\u201d. People running around, doing rehearsals, and then once the show starts, you\u2019re on live TV. It\u2019s very demanding but I don\u2019t give a shit about that anymore. Not my problem anymore. We\u2019re going to be on live TV with AEW and it\u2019s cool that I have that experience. Not everyone has worked live TV before and it\u2019s different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> It\u2019s a testament to the indies and how well they\u2019re doing considering that WWE has been bringing in so many top indie stars to NXT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> I never thought of that until you just said it but it\u2019s amazing. I thought it was a bad idea when Hunter started buying the indies. You had Seth and me, along with Joey Mercury and we were able to sneak in a few key guys like Luke Harper, Neville, and Cesaro. Once I was on the main roster and NXT started, which I wasn\u2019t a part of, every week Triple H was taking an Instagram selfie with some indy guy. I don\u2019t know if he was trying to make himself look cool and get some indie cred or what, or make NXT cool. He basically started buying the indies. I remember thinking that it might not be a good idea. Then where are all of these good ideas going to come from? If they signed Daniel Bryan at 21, he never would\u2019ve become Bryan Danielson and you never would\u2019ve had WrestleMania 30<\/em>. If they signed Punk before he really became CM Punk, he never would\u2019ve done what he did. If they signed me at 21, I never would\u2019ve become anything good. I had to develop first before getting brought in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buying up all of the indy scene was the same as Vince buying up all the territories back in the day. There\u2019s nobody left to cherry-pick for talent. It\u2019s amazing that even though they bought up the indies that it has repopulated itself stronger than ever. Makes you very optimistic about the future of pro wrestling. That\u2019s probably the biggest difference between my interview and the Punk interview. He was basically saying fuck pro wrestling, and I was saying that I got my love of pro wrestling back. I want to wrestle everyone. Let\u2019s drop all the bridges, get all the companies together and have a super show that sells out a stadium right now. Fuck it. The sum of wrestling outside of WWE is bigger than WWE. I feel like myself, the entire AEW roster, and all of the fans are the same team, reaching for the same goal, to make wrestling awesome. To not be embarrassed to tell people you\u2019re a wrestling fan because they\u2019d say to you \u201coh that show with fart jokes and they poop on each other or whatever the fuck happens over there anymore\u201d. If you\u2019re a wrestling fan and you show someone some things from WWE, you\u2019d be embarrassed. You\u2019d want to bust out old VHS tapes to show them why you\u2019re a wrestling fan because this isn\u2019t it. I want people to be wearing an AEW shirt and have someone say \u201cOh you\u2019re a wrestling fan, f*ck yeah, me too\u201d. When I was standing on that poker chip at the end of Double Or Nothing<\/em>, I didn\u2019t know when we were going off the air. I stayed up there but for some reason, I just wanted to take a fucking victory lap. Security did not appreciate it, but I took a giant victory lap around the arena, off the air and I felt like I was with 12,000 teammates. We are all AEW. We have that common bond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> There seems to be this internet wrestling fan theory that once Vince is gone and Hunter is in control that everything is going to be OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> Everyone seems to like NXT and there\u2019s no Vince on that product. I think he\u2019s the most capable guy of taking over the whole thing. I\u2019m certainly not. I can\u2019t imagine the expertise it would take in so many areas it would take to sit in Vince\u2019s chair. He\u2019s the only real option. But he\u2019s 50, Vince is 70, and Vince\u2019s mother is like 90 something and still plays tennis every day. If Vince lives until he\u2019s 90, Hunter won\u2019t take over until he\u2019s 70. I\u2019d much rather see it change sooner than later because Vince is out of ideas. He can\u2019t adapt. It would be the best thing for him to at least step aside for a while and see what happens. He\u2019s trapped in this bubble that he\u2019s created around himself. He was a genius in the \u201980s and knew how to adapt in the \u201990s. Neither of which are true in 2019. You know that Spiderman<\/em> movie with Toby McGuire wherein the beginning Willem Dafoe was the bad guy and they vote him out of his own company? Why aren\u2019t the shareholders getting together here and saying, \u201cThis dude is laughing at his own fart jokes. We\u2019ve got to get him out of here\u201d. Isn\u2019t there a way where we can all band together and squeeze him out? He went from creating modern wrestling to being the one that\u2019s hindering it the most but that\u2019s over there on that side. Over on this side, we\u2019re doing nothing but creating. I don\u2019t have to worry about what\u2019s going on over there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> People weren\u2019t quite sure how to interpret you not saying much about Triple H in the Jericho interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> My thing was between Vince and me. I had a good relationship with Hunter. There\u2019s no heat. The only person I might have a bad relationship with is Vince and that\u2019s not a bad relationship because of animosity. We just don\u2019t speak the same language creatively. It\u2019s better for both of us to not work together. With everyone else, it\u2019s all good, ya know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> Just from knowing you for a long time, I know how important Japan has always been to you and how much you wanted to work there. Now you\u2019ve signed with New Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong> At the very least, it was always a bucket list thing for me, to at least have one run in Japan. Of all my favorite places I got to wrestle with WWE, the shows in Japan were always my favorite. I loved the fans, the culture, the respect for pro wrestling. It makes you want to stay in the ring forever. New Japan gave me a buzz shortly after I left WWE and without hesitation, I was in. To go back to Sumo Hall, with New Japan this time, I can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AG:<\/strong> Should we be looking for you in more places besides AEW and New Japan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> I could pop up anywhere, man. I\u2019ve got the rest of my year planned, some bucket list stuff. I\u2019m putting my foot to the gas pedal this year because I\u2019m so excited about stuff and then probably let off a little in 2020 and primarily focus on AEW. I\u2019ve got a movie in pre-production, I\u2019m trying to make my own movie, I\u2019ve got a lot going on and at any moment I might just pop up and a fight might break out in any ring around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to add this final story that didn\u2019t quite fit in the body of the interview but absolutely deserved to be told.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Moxley:<\/strong><\/strong> I was privileged enough to be able to work for Vince McMahon and also work with Dusty Rhodes, who was the head of creative at FCW when I was there. I had a very great and fulfilling time there. I would sit in the office with Dusty in the afternoons and just shoot the shit, in between training sessions. We would talk creative and ideas and he was still able at that point in his life to get excited about an idea just the same way he did at his apex in the late \u201980s. I was privileged enough to work for arguably the two biggest creative driving forces in our industry. I\u2019ll never get to main event WrestleMania<\/em> but I got to main event Starrcade<\/em> in my hometown of Cincinnati and that\u2019s right up there, the top for me. Even though it was WWE\u2019s version, still, it was my hometown, and Dusty created Starrcade<\/em>. I didn\u2019t look at Dusty as a mentor. There are no peers to Dusty Rhodes, but he treated me like one. He had this vision of me, of how I was going to take over WWE. These vignettes would be in a smokey bar, the camera zooms in on my back, Dean Ambrose leather jacket, in the Viper Club. He called it the Viper Club but he meant the Viper Room. He had this vision of me as a Johnny Depp, River Phoenix, \u201cyou\u2019re James Dean baby\u201d. He literally saw me as the coolest person in the world; that\u2019s how he pictured these vignettes and pitched them to me. Dusty saw me as the coolest person in the world and Vince saw me as an idiot. That\u2019s the difference between the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flash forward to my first promo I released after leaving WWE, the prison one and I knew we were filming in LA. I kept thinking about the leather jacket and the Viper Club and I insisted on getting a shot at the Viper Room, just for me. There was deep, deep meaning to that. What I didn\u2019t know is that the dice on the wall were on a two and five, double or nothing but the conspiracy theorists out there noticed it. The other conspiracy theory I heard was that the dog represented Roman Reigns, the hound of justice. The dog was just a good boy doing his job, but hey, art is subjective and it can mean whatever you want it to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Moxley, formerly known as Dean Ambrose while in WWE, has turned the wrestling world on its head this week. Moxley debuted for brand new company AEW (All Elite Wrestling), attacking Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega after their main event match, followed that up with an announcement that he had also signed to wrestle for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":160502569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[29,22,30],"class_list":["post-160502474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-aew","tag-independent-wrestling","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160502474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160502474"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160502474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160502568,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160502474\/revisions\/160502568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/160502569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160502474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160502474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrevas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160502474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}