WWE Superstar Dean Ambrose was recently interviewed by Reyan Ali of
The Classical. Here are the highlights:
You poured so much into the Jon Moxley character over the years. What’s different about Jon Moxley compared to Dean Ambrose? Can you tell me about the relationship between those guys?
Eh, I mean, a name’s just a name. I don’t think that’s all that big of a deal. You could call me an autobiographical kind of wrestler because if you went through my career, looking at me character-wise or by what I was doing at the time, you can kind of see that [my place in] real life would reflect in what I was doing in wrestling. To me, it’s very important that everything I do is real; it always has been to me. Everything I do is real or it’s really a reflection of me. I’ve never been a completely 100 percent fictional character.
That works for some people—and there have been some great ones—but I’ve almost always just been an exaggerated mirror image of what you get when I roll out of bed in the morning. If I’m in a good mood, if I’m feeling arrogant, happy, sad, funny, angry, whatever it is, you’re going to get some sort of reflection of that in the performance. I mean, the guy I was four or five years ago—I’m not really in the same place then as I am now. Giving that same image off wouldn’t be authentic.
Last things to ask: Who do you travel with? Who do you want to feud with in the future?
I travel with The Shield. We keep it very tight and travel together. I’ll travel with Claudio [Castagnoli] sometimes—Antonio Cesaro. I get along with pretty much everybody. I’m really easy to get along with. I can be pretty quiet and keep to myself. I’m a guy who just kind of sits in the back of a room [to] watch and learn and see what everybody’s doing. I’m a super laid-back, easy-to-get-along-with kind of guy.
As far as who I’d like to feud with in the future, there’s so many [people] it’s hard to count. I’m sure eventually, it’s going to happen one day where either any of the three of us in The Shield are going to be looking across the ring from each other. You know, when that happens, that’ll be a good day because hopefully, it’s in a position where we’re doing it in a high-profile scenario for a lot of money.
Randy [Orton] is a guy. I’m on the same side of the fence as Randy right now, but Randy’s a guy that I love watching work. He’s a guy [where] I’ll always stop and watch his matches.
[Voice rises enthusiastically] Christian is just so unbelievably good. I mean, I always knew Christian was really good. Working with Christian, he’s been here for so long and has so much experience, you realize his brain is a super-evolved version of my brain [with] the way he sees matches play out, the way he comes up with things, especially in tag matches and stuff like that. Christian’s a guy who I’ve only had a small sampling of working with. Christian’s a guy I want to spend a lot more time in the ring with.
It’s awesome working with RVD, too. I’m a big ECW fan, so I got to work with him on a loop in California, and he’s cool. He’s friggin’ RVD. He’s got all the RVD spots and he’s ageless and stuff. There’s just countless guys that you want to work with for one reason or the other. I’m looking forward to diving headfirst into all of them.
