Jon Moxley: AEW is ‘building something sustainable for the future’
During recent interviews, Jon Moxley addressed the Death Riders angle, living in Cincinnati, and AEW working to remove “carny bulls–t’ from wrestling.
With AEW Dynamite: Maximum Carnage scheduled for his hometown tonight, the AEW World Champion has been speaking with the media to promote the show. He told Yahoo Sports that AEW has recently been working to create “something sustainable for the future” and that the on-screen product is building “a lot more than what happens in the ring.”
Moxley said:
“Storytelling is always needed, it’s essential, it’s non-negotiable. It’s a vital element to wrestling. You need a hook. How much more do you enjoy sports when you have an investment in who the person is or the story of the season? Wrestling is no different. You’re not going to pick up a book that has a bunch of descriptions of random objects or events — there has to be a story or a thread that will take you on a ride.”
“We’re building. It’s about a lot more than what happens in the ring,” Moxley continued. “Building something sustainable for the future that we can take pride in, we’ve been doing that for the past few months.”
“It’s about a mindset and an approach of taking pride in what we do. We have a lot of guys and girls that are part of it. I’m pretty proud, but it’s a long game and it’s little tiny victories every day and a constant learning process. It’s really exciting.”
“I don’t work for AEW. I work for all of the people that need this place to succeed, that’s the way I look at it,” he says. “For this place to succeed, we’ve got to operate at the highest level at every level. That’s what we accept if you’re going to be a part of this team. I feel a responsibility to these people because to be successful in wrestling, they’ve given and sacrificed their lives for the pursuit of this, as I had. I am but a servant to the pursuit of helping the whole thing, raising it up, and bringing along as many people as we can. It’s making me better and helping me learn a hell of a lot.”
Moxley told CityBeat that AEW has been working to rid the industry of an out-of-date “carny” attitude.
“We’re in the middle of the history books right now and we have our hands on the controls and we have the pen. We can write whatever the f–k we want, and it’s very exciting.”
“This is a business built on carnival sideshows. We’ve got to take out a lot of this old carny business — you know, the ‘brother this, brother that’ kind of bullshit carny attitude because that attitude is how they’ve scammed fans out of money. That is not what this sport is nowadays. We grew up wanting to be wrestlers — this is all we’ve ever wanted to be.”
“This is our craft. This is our life. We take it very seriously, and we take pride in it. Getting rid of that attitude in the industry is a big part of what we’ve been trying to do here at AEW.”
Tonight, Moxley will defend the AEW World Championship against Powerhouse Hobbs in his hometown of Cincinnati at AEW Dynamite: Maximum Carnage. Moxley moved back to the city in 2021 after having grown up there.
“Cincinnati is really sick as f—,” Moxley told Cincinatti.com. “It’s like all of the big city stuff, but it’s still small enough to get around, and you’ve kind of got a little bit of everything. It’s just got a flavor. This city is very much me, and I can’t imagine being anywhere else or from anywhere else.”
However, Moxley’s community involvement in the city has not always gone smoothly. His spouse, Renee Paquette, insisted Moxley tell the story of when a comment he made to the live crowd at a Cincinnati Bengals game led to a change in policy for the team.
“I didn’t even say anything that bad. They asked me to pump up the crowd,” Moxley said of the incident.
“You said, ‘Patrick Mahomes is going to piss his little red pants all the way back to Kansas City,'” Paquette added.
“Yeah, and that’s not that bad,” Moxley responded. “It’s not that bad at all. Get out of here, dude. It’s Sunday. This is football. It’s not Sunday School hopscotch. It’s the NFL. But yeah, they got all upset about it.”