Jon Moxley opens up once again about his time in the WWE.
Since departing from WWE officially at midnight on April 30th, Jon Moxley has kept the spotlight on him with promotional videos, match announcements, debuting for All Elite Wrestling and he has been doing a handful of interviews in-which he discusses the positive and negative experiences he had in WWE. Along with the Talk Is Jericho podcast, Moxley joined the 'Flip The Strip' radio show, talked with Wade Keller and recently spoke with Andrew Grevas of the '25 Years Later' site. One topic that Moxley touched on during his recent interview was NXT founder and senior producer Triple H bringing in a plethora of talent from the independent scene. The former Dean Ambrose stated that he initially thought it was a bad idea when the majority of the top names from the indies were being brought into WWE and said every week Triple H was taking an Instagram selfie with a new talent.
"I never thought of that until you just said it but its amazing. I thought it was a bad idea when Hunter started buying the indies. You had Seth and me, along with Joey Mercury and we were able to sneak in a few key guys like Luke Harper, Neville and Cesaro. Once I was on the main roster and NXT started, which I wasn’t a part of, every week Triple H was taking an Instagram selfie with some indie guy. I don’t know if he was trying to make himself look cool and get some indie cred or what, make NXT cool. He basically started buying the indies. I remember thinking that it might not be a good idea. Then where are all of these good ideas going to come from? If they signed Daniel Bryan at 21, he never would’ve become Bryan Danielson and you never would’ve had WrestleMania 30. If they signed Punk before he really became CM Punk, he never would’ve done what he did. If they signed me at 21, I never would’ve become anything good. I had to develop first before getting brought in.
Buying up all of the indie scene was the same as Vince buying up all the territories back in the day." Moxley explained. "There’s nobody left to cherry pick for talent. It’s amazing that even though they bought up the indies that it has repopulated itself stronger than ever. Makes you very optimistic about the future of pro wrestling. That’s probably the biggest difference between my interview and the Punk interview. He was basically saying f*ck pro wrestling, and I was saying that I got my love of pro wrestling back. I want to wrestle everyone. Let’s drop all the bridges, get all the companies together and have a super show that sells out a stadium right now. F*ck it." Moxley said. "The sum of wrestling outside of WWE is bigger than WWE. I feel like myself, the entire AEW roster and all of the fans are the same team, reaching for the same goal, to make wrestling awesome. To not be embarrassed to tell people you’re a wrestling fan because they’d say to you, 'Oh that show with fart jokes and they poop on each other or whatever the f*ck happens over there anymore'. If you’re a wrestling fan and you show someone some things from WWE, you’d be embarrassed. You’d want to bust out old VHS tapes to show them why you’re a wrestling fan because this isn’t it. I want people to be wearing an AEW shirt and have someone say, 'Oh you’re a wrestling fan, f*ck yeah, me too'. When I was standing on that poker chip at the end of Double Or Nothing, I didn’t know when we were going off the air. I stayed up there but for some reason, I just wanted to take a f*cking victory lap. Security did not appreciate it but I took a giant victory lap around the arena, off the air and I felt like I was with 12,000 teammates. We are all AEW. We have that common bond."
With revealing the information that he has during these interviews, Moxley was asked if he has possibly burned a bridge with WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. Moxley does not feel that is the case and said that Vince would welcome him back with open arms if he wanted to ever return to the company.
"A bridge is never burned in WWE. Vince [McMahon] would have me back tomorrow and would love it if I came crawling back to him." Jon said. "I think Punk had a lot more personal animosity towards WWE and specific people. I don’t know every detail of his story and I haven’t spoken to him since he left WWE. His experience drove him to not like wrestling anymore, I think. For me, I wanted the exact opposite. I just got pro wrestling back after losing it years ago. I’m like, 'Whoa, I’m back in the game, here we go'. I wanted to make sure that people knew that there’s no bitterness and that my love of wrestling and my desire to perform for the fans, my desire to meet and exceed their expectations and my love for the fans has only gotten bigger. They have stayed with me through thick and thin and they’re going to follow me wherever I go. Now they’re AEW fans. They can still be WWE fans but they’re AEW fans too. Not trying to come off as arrogant but that’s a lot of fans that are now following AEW. We’re garnering a huge fan base and we’ve only done one show. It just so happens that the one show we’ve done was f*cking awesome. Even if this whole thing goes f*cking tits up and we never run another show, that was one helluva show. But we’re going to run more shows, a lot of shows. We’re running a show June 29th in Daytona Beach, Florida, me vs Joey Janela. That’s a beautiful, ugly mess." He laughed.
To read the full interview with the former WWE Champion, head over '25 Years Later'. To check out some of the articles that were published here on Fightful about Jon Moxley, click here.
