Jon Moxley's New Groove

Moxley, shown here clutching Jeff Cobb, can spread his wings better in New Japan
Photo Credit: NJPW1972.com

Even back when he was working deathmatches and cultivating a cool Nolan Joker persona without the paint, you could tell Jon Moxley had a certain eccentricity about him. He wasn't Colt Cabana or Santino Marella, but his capacity for comedy wrestling was present. WWE saw this glimmer as well, but after The Shield broke up, Mox, as Dean Ambrose, was miscast. When Vince McMahon sees that you can make people laugh, he doesn't recognize that that ability can manifest in different ways other than "doing stupid shit that makes a septuagenarian cokehead sociopath guffaw." Instead of exploring studio space in cool and exciting ways, Ambrose rolled hot dog carts to the ring, jobbed to exploding television monitors, and went to the doctor to get needles stuck in his ass.

Of course, Moxley/Ambrose wasn't the only wrestler done dirty by McMahon's rudimentary understanding of character development. Wrestling, like acting, should have a wide swath of character archetypes, and yet the only ones that McMahon has ever gotten right are "tall übermensch whomst wins all the time" and "rebellious little shit who people like because they hit their boss." So "Charlie Kelly who likes to hit people with things wrapped in barbed wire" was certainly not a character WWE was ever going to get right. The problem is, what promotion could get it right without allowing the person playing it to have most of the input? The answer is "no promotion," which is why Mox's lightly-salted eccentricity is able to shine in New Japan Pro Wrestling.

It's not to say that Gedo doesn't have input on him, or that he's hands-off with most of his characters. I can say with confidence though that Mox name recognition coming in probably allowed him a certain degree of freedom, much in the same way that someone like Kenny Omega, Hiroshi Tanahashi, or Kazuchika Okada have or had some free reign in their stays with the company. I can't see Gedo going to Mox and telling him to adopt Shota Umino, call him Shooter, and give him a jacket. But that whole underlying arc definitely feels like something Moxley would do just to riff, to have him break out and maybe give someone like Umino a little boost when he transitions from Young Lion to real boy full-fledged New Japan roster member.

Of course, that's not the only thing he's shown in New Japan already in his short tenure there. It's the little things like blowing a kiss to Miho during his match with Taichi, or proclaiming that he doesn't know Jeff Cobb or much about him, but that he respects him. These moves are that of someone who takes himself seriously, but not seriously enough that he ends up coming to the ring in a hood and exuding powerful "I study the blade" energy like a certain Aerial Assassin. It also manifests itself in ways that differentiate himself from, say, Toru Yano.

Moxley will still bleed buckets if he has to and make other people bleed buckets; just look at his match with Joey Janela at Fyter Fest, which was probably skinning the surface of what he's able to do now. The biggest test for him will be his run in All Elite Wrestling. While I think he'll get freedom there, I also imagine that he'll be more heavily guided there, as Tony Khan and Cody Rhodes will undoubtedly want to exert more control over talent than Gedo does. Still, no matter how questionable the narrative direction in AEW has been (more on that later), Mox being there gives them a good leg to stand on.

If McMahon observes his competition at all, he should be learning the lesson that he should maybe loosen the reigns up and let his talent do what they want more and less of what he wants them to do. I doubt he will, as he's probably alternating between overlording RAW and Smackdown with trying to write as many rules for his new XFL that make the players and fans know that they WILL respect the flag. That really only means that as long as he's like this, wrestlers like Jon Moxley will be better off elsewhere, places that allow him to have more input in what he does in the ring and on the mic.