Jon Moxley talks changes on AEW with new TV deal, goals for younger talent, more

[Chris]

Exclusive | Jon Moxley unplugged on the ‘hard reset’ in AEW: ‘Most ambitious things I’ve ever attempted’

Jon Moxley calls it “Day Zero,” the day he returned to AEW to change the course of the five-year-old company.

nypost.com

“Everything that has happened up until this point doesn’t matter,” Moxley said in a recent Zoom interview with The Post. “This is Day Zero. We begin from here, and it might not look much different right now, but it will, and things are accomplished by small incremental steps, doing little things consistently. And that is how big changes are made over periods of time.”

“My goals going forward are probably the most ambitious things I’ve ever attempted,” Moxley said. “And you know, logically on paper, one would say they would probably be impossible, but we’re going to do it. We’re going to accomplish those things.”

“There’s just a lot of noise in the world, and sometimes, you really got to do something drastic to really get everybody to stop what they’re doing and look in your direction to make a point, and I’m absolutely not afraid to do that,” Moxley said.

“I have a dream, a vision, something I can see,” Moxley said. “I see a world where everyone is successful, where everyone can be successful, where the talents are fostered and their growth is fostered, and talents are set up for success and set up for growth to be whatever it is they can be, where their strengths are brought to the forefront and utilized, and we mine their value out of them and give them the opportunity to be whatever it is they can be.”

He noted an instance earlier this year when a backstage person said something that stunned him, and he felt talents were not put in a position to succeed due to a lack of “preparation, framework and direction.”

That, Moxley said, was just a “grain of salt” of the issues he’s seen.

“This individual said, ‘Well, it’s the bottom of the card; it doesn’t matter. It’s the bottom of the card; it doesn’t matter,’” Moxley said. “Can you imagine saying that? ‘Like, you’re f–king fired. Yeah, you’re f–king fired. Go work at Sunglass Hut. You should be f–king pistol-whipped for saying that.

“Everybody that’s on the top was at one time on the bottom. That’s how it works. You climb the ladder. You see a lot of frustration and confusion from some of these talents because there is no f–king ladder. They don’t know what to do. They’re kind of just wandering in the desert. We’re gonna grab them by the shoulder and were gonna walk ‘em.”

“The more weight you put on something, you have to add infrastructure and support to support that, or otherwise, it’s gonna break down,” Moxley said.

“By signing this deal, we made a commitment to do something and to attempt something, to create something, to be successful at something. You know, this is not a time to celebrate. There is no time to do that. This is the time to get to work.

“What are we going to do with this opportunity? That’s what I’m worried about. There’s been a lot of, kind of in the previous AEW, in the past, you know, there’s been a lot of sitting around celebrating, just treating it like this stuff just happens. Like, oh, it’s just success, just, you know, happens, and this is the way it’s supposed to be, and it’s not gonna go anywhere. Like, this can all go away tomorrow.”

“It can be whatever the f–k we want it to be; there’s no rules,” Moxley said. “Any rules we have … ‘Oh, we got to have, you know, interviews on the set that look like this so we got to have this in time, we got to put this up.’ Any of the rules we have are just things we put on ourselves. It’s pro wrestling, man, and it’s always evolving. And even you gotta stay evolving with it, or you get left behind.”

“You have to appreciate how great this opportunity is that we have right now,” Moxley said. “We have a responsibility to make the most of it. What AEW becomes in the future, in the next year, next five years, the next 10 years, whatever it is, it’s going to be whatever we make it.”

 

[Comrade Khan]

I know it is half kayfabe but ya - I think Mox and Danielson are the right people to lead AEW in the future. I like a lot of what he says and agree with him.