Jon Moxley is leading a revolution within AEW. His Loss of life Riders faction is laying waste to all that stands earlier than them. Orange Cassidy, Daniel Garcia and Darby Allin are main the small regime making an attempt to cease his assault from inside.
Since coming back from his hiatus, throughout which he was rehabbing a hip damage and likewise made a short cease in Japan, Moxley has been on a mission. He has persistently spoken of his want to rid AEW of its malaise and eradicate those that need to hold it the identical.
Throughout a recent interview with Joseph Staszewski of the New York Post, Moxley shared his ideas on the present revolution taking place inside AEW. He labeled his return as a “laborious reset and full restart” for the corporate.
Nevertheless, Moxley’s imaginative and prescient goes far past the Loss of life Riders and their present storyline. For him, that is about returning AEW to its former heights and surpassing them.
“All the pieces that has occurred up till this level doesn’t matter,” Moxley mentioned. “That is Day 0. We start from right here, and it won’t look a lot totally different proper now, however it would, and issues are completed by small incremental steps, doing little issues persistently. And that’s how large adjustments are remodeled intervals of time.”
Moxley is one in every of wrestling greatest stars. He’s among the many biggest draws on the AEW roster and helped present early legitimacy to the younger firm when he selected to go away WWE whereas being a high expertise inside the promotion. Now, he is aiming to be a cornerstone of AEW’s new section, the place they embrace setting their very own guidelines and redefining what wrestling could be.
“It may be regardless of the f— we would like it to be; there’s no guidelines,” Moxley mentioned. “Any guidelines now we have … ‘Oh, we bought to have, you already know, interviews on the set that seem like this so we bought to have this in time, we bought to place this up.’ Any of the principles now we have are simply issues we placed on ourselves. It’s professional wrestling, man, and it’s at all times evolving. And even you gotta keep evolving with it, otherwise you get left behind.”
AEW wanted this. Its numbers have been in sharp decline for the previous 12 to 18 months. Even a gentle inflow of recent expertise, together with Will Ospreay, Mercedes Mone and Adam Copeland, has did not halt the slide. These struggles additionally translated to ticket gross sales. Earlier this yr, it grew to become commonplace to see an virtually empty area throughout episodes of Dynamite or Collision.
Moxley is bringing a brand new power and a brand new really feel. His present storyline showcases homegrown AEW expertise, and he is dragging them upward by placing them in one of many hottest storylines in skilled wrestling.
Solely time will inform if Moxley can obtain his aim. However proper now, AEW programming feels totally different. It has an edge to it. There are twists and turns, and there are causes to tune in each week. There’s nonetheless a number of work to be completed, however Moxley is clearly placing the foundations in place.
