Jon Moxley Talks Being ‘In Jail’ With WWE, Concerns Before His AEW Debut & Renee Young’s Support
Photo Credit: Thomas Tischio / AEW
The first episode of AEW Unrestricted podcast dropped this morning and the first guest on it happened to be Jon Moxley. Hosted by both Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone, Moxley gave his full background on getting into the squared circle and eventually dives right in to him making the transition from “The Lunatic Fringe” Dean Ambrose back to his old self as Moxley. His initial plan was quite different as he was going to take some extended time off, but AEW changed everything.
“I was paying attention to Ring of Honor, IMPACT, Japan – knew I wanted to go to Japan for sure cause I’d always love wrestling over there when we’d go for WWE cause I just loved the fans over there. It’s just a different culture and style and I got a real taste for it the couple times I was able to go so I know I go back and always wanted to go back and the feeling that I could in the back of my mind. So I was thinking I was gonna pretty much going to disappear and then come back later on when I got like a new shtick of some sort or whatever. That didn’t happen at all. Not even close.”
Mox had a major concern after becoming becoming a free agent and that was having the WWE cornball stink on him.”
“I was scared that I was so synonymous with like WWE crap that I’d walk out and they’d be like, ‘Oh God! The idiot from WWE. Oh God, What are you gonna do? Hit somebody with the hot dog?” But that reaction was quite the opposite when he showed up at Double Or Nothing to attack Kenny Omega. “I could never explain my gratitude toward the people that were in the building that night for just immediately embracing and accepting me as myself in that like and not putting any of WWE’s crap onto me, you know?
Mox continues:
“So then it was just like off to the races. Like I thought it was going to be this long rehabilitation process for myself. I was like, ‘Do I even remember how to wrestle anymore? I don’t even know.’ But it was just like, it all came back so quickly. It was like almost like I’ve been asleep for years and I woke up out of a nap. It really is like a totally different guy who was like in jail and like, ‘Oh Jon’s out of jail. Cool, sweet. He’s back.’ It’s hard to even explain.”
“Got the momentum rolling again, but you’re always gonna have ups and downs, you know??So like last year was crazy highs and lows. Hopefully this year, let’s stay high, baby.”
Moxley also takes about his marriage and strong relationship with Renee Young. Both are driven and both are supportive of what one another wants to do from a career perspective, no matter where their respective roads may lead to.
“We kind of surpassed like any kind of bull crap kinda thing, you know what I mean? She’s such a valuable asset there and her career is on the ups, she’s got big stuff coming and whatever her ultimate goals whether they lie in wrestling or outside of it, she’ll be going after that super hardcore and I’ll be right behind her. She’s been super behind me throughout this whole thing.”
“She’s a woman in power. Woman in charge doing stuff. I’m hoping she gets The Today Show. One of those types of gigs, you know? I might move to New York, but yeah. Then I can just truly check out and get fat.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can listen to the entire first episode of AEW Unrestricted by going here.