The Passion of the Moxley

Moxley, here with Cody Rhodes, turned that literal middle finger to a proverbial and verbal one on Talk Is Jericho
Photo Credit: @JonMoxley

By now, every wrestling fan knows the deal with Jon Moxley. He decided he didn't want to be Dean Ambrose anymore, so he let his WWE contract lapse and went into parts unknown, at least until this past Saturday, when he showed up at the end of All Elite Wrestling's Double or Nothing. Since then, news has dropped that he's the Second Knife Pervert in New Japan Pro Wrestling, that his first match back will be against Juice Robinson for the IWGP United States Championship, that he's signed a "multi-year deal" with AEW, that his first AEW opponent will be Joey Janela, and that he'll be wrestling for Northeast Wrestling for at least two dates, one against Pentagón, Jr. and one against Darby Allin. That's a lot of news to drop for Moxley, whose availability for wrestling in the short-term was questioned thanks to a movie he was shooting. Now the information shows that he'll be balancing his working dates with his acting roles.

All four matches announced for Moxley so far look incredibly promising on paper. He will have three opponents who will feed his hardcore/crazy tendencies in Allin, Penta, and Janela. Allin and Janela probably will crazily bump for him, while Penta is an opponent who can match Mox's frantic brawling. However, the most interesting match to me is the most divergent of the four, against Robinson. Since leaving NXT, Robinson has developed into perhaps the purest babyface wrestler in the world. While I don't see Mox as a pure heel (his assault on Kenny Omega at the end of Double or Nothing notwithstanding), his manic energy pairs well with a plucky dude whose entire existence is predicated on being an underdog. That's not even taking into account what Game Changer Wrestling most likely has in store for him that they have yet to announce.

Moxley's post-WWE slate is looking incredibly bright, but he apparently had a lot to say about his exit from WWE. He went on Chris Jericho's podcast to give his public exit interview. If you don't to want listen (like me), r/SquaredCircle has the bullet points, but Twitter user @SlayerMomsen has a more stream of consciousness transcription in thread form. Basically, if you want to affirm your confirmation bias that Vince McMahon is the cancer choking WWE from the inside, well, Moxley has the nectar for you to sop the fuck right up. Judging from those two sources, I have what I think are the most important things from the whole shebang:

• Despite the fact that Moxley was going to spend most of the interview critiquing the company, he is grateful for his time there if just because he got to meet his wife, Renee Young.
• He knew since July 2018 that he wanted to leave.
• He criticized the scripts handed to him as "hot garbage" but said Vince McMahon thought they were great.
• The jabs at Roman Reigns' cancer were McMahon's idea. Moxley thought them to be distasteful, and he dissuaded McMahon from scripting a second promo about Reigns' cancer by saying it would cost them sponsors.
• He wanted to work guys like AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan when he came back, but McMahon slotted him to feud with Seth Rollins again. Moxley wanted something new, not the same stuff he'd been doing forever.
• He didn't mind bumping for Nia Jax, but he thought they only made him do it because he was leaving, not because they were being groundbreaking or anything.
• He jabbed at Brock Lesnar as a sign that McMahon thinks he can buy anything.
• He believes that while McMahon is a problem, that the solution won't come from within because of the structure he built around himself since 2002 (an indirect jab at Paul Levesque, who is part of that structure).
• He said EC3 is his friend, saying the angle where EC3 went over him in three minutes sucked because it was the former who got the backlash.
• He was only paid $500 for the Shield special, which is what guys get for "showing up."
• Deathmatch wrestler Sick Nick Mondo actually shot his return promo, and Moxley himself paid $8K for the best camera possible to shoot it.
• He signed with AEW so that he could be "the best version of himself."

So the interview showed Moxley was a guy at the end of his rope in a company he'd fallen out of love with, which is totally natural. You could see that even though he had a certain Charlie Kelly from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia energy to him that McMahon and the rest of creative never really tapped into it, or misread it and made him into this Three Stooges distillate that clashed with the more serious parts of his personality. The way McMahon views comedy is so twisted that he would never be able to get it right. Basically, WWE does a select few characters well enough to get by, and Charlie Kelly with an edge isn't one of them. You'd think that pushing hot dog carts and getting needles stuck in his ass not working would allow the company to let him do what brought him to the dance, and that's unhinged ultraviolence, but I'm already busting a gut inside imagining a world where McMahon actually does the scouting for the people he signs. It's so implausible.

Regardless, Moxley is free to work for companies that will allow him the creative freedom he deserves. His journey starts a week from today in the second-biggest wrestling company in the world, and the one that has more critical acclaim over the last five or so years than most other promotions. On a personal level, I'm damn excited to see where Moxley goes from here.