Jon Moxley talks about the wear and tear his wrestling career has taken on his body especially because of the travel.
Before the emergence of the global pandemic, the one defining aspect of professional wrestling on a global scale for a company like WWE or AEW was its touring element. After years of WWE being the only game in town, All Elite Wrestling was making a name for itself as the first regular weekly touring brand to come along in nearly 20 years.
Jon Moxley, who spent nearly seven years in the grind with WWE, regularly touring and making towns, recently spoke to Inside The Ropes’ Gary Cassidy for BBC The Social and revealed that he considers the travel to be the hardest part of professional wrestling.
“When you’re doing it at a high level, yeah, the travel is definitely the hardest part. I used to say, like, and a lot of people say that you get paid to travel, the wrestling is the fun part. It’s the bonus part. Being in the ring for 15-20 minutes every night is your release.”
He continued, “I usually feel like crap most of the day, every day. The best I ever feel is usually right after a match, even if it was a very physically demanding match. My adrenaline is high, I’m loose, I’m on a high, I’m feeling good. When I walk into the back and I’m bleeding and sweating and everything and all busted up, that’s usually when I actually feel the best.”
Even though he considers it the hardest part of the job, Moxley knows that it's something you have to do because unlike many jobs during the pandemic, you cannot facilitate a professional wrestling match over a Zoom call.
“When you’re on the road every single night, that’s kind of the high you’re chasing at the end of the night. The travel’s the hard part. It’ll take years off your career, and when you’re going on well over ten years of just being in chronic pain all the time now, you just get used to it. It’s part of the deal. That’s I guess a byproduct of the whole thing – but travel is probably the biggest component of breaking your body down, but it’s part of what you have to do because you can’t Zoom in a f***ing pro wrestling match. You’ve got to, you got to get there. You’ve got to go to Scotland, you’ve got to Japan and wrestle in these places live – and it’s all worth it, man.”
Ronda Rousey, who spent a full year as a WWE Superstar, has been quoted as saying that the travel was the hardest part for her as well. Learn more here.
AEW is slated to go back on the road beginning in July. Learn more here.
