Jon Moxley Was “A Big Producer” Backstage Of AEW Full Gear Feud
Jon Moxley played a big role behind the scenes to help one of the biggest matches that took place at AEW Full Gear between Saraya and Britt Baker.
The role of a Producer in pro wrestling is to assist wrestlers in putting together a match, an interview, or a backstage segment. Many times, a Producer is a former wrestler that has a lot of experience working in the business, and sometimes in AEW, it even includes an active wrestler like Jon Moxley.
At AEW Full Gear on November 19th, Saraya competed in her first pro wrestling in nearly five years after suffering a major neck injury that required surgery. Prior to the match, Saraya spoke about the process of getting cleared by a doctor who gave her the green light to compete again on Halloween, which was about three weeks before Full Gear took place. Saraya beat Baker in their match and felt good after it was finished.
During an appearance on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Saraya spoke about how former AEW World Champion Jon Moxley played a big part in helping Saraya and Baker build their Full Gear match.
“I was thinking about that promo [announcing she was clear]…we changed it up last minute with the sitdown. Me, Britt, Renee, and Mox [Jon Moxley], because Mox has been a big producer on our segments. After the first promo, he was like, ‘I’m going to f**king make sure that we make this as best as possible. I want to help you.’ We changed the sitdown because they only gave us two minutes. We’re not going to be able to tell a story in two minutes, especially backstage and without a crowd, you can’t feel the energy. That promo, we were supposed to do in two minutes in a backstage. We’re just like, ‘We’re going to change this.'”
Saraya went on to explain that instead of doing the sitdown interview with Baker, they changed it and got more time to continue the story on the next episode of Dynamite.
“We didn’t ask Tony about it, we just did it. Britt had to go do something anyway at like five and she was like, ‘I’ll be right back.’ We just went, ‘We’re going to change it and say she didn’t turn up. It fits in with her thinking that I’m coming in, Renee is my friend,’ we could piece it together so much easier in two minutes. We did that, it went way better, then we told Tony, ‘is it okay if we get this promo next week?’ Luckily, he was so great with it, even though we’re changing his show on the day. ‘Great, we’ll get Britt backstage explaining why she didn’t turn up, next week we can give you six minutes,’ we went over, ‘we’ll give you six minutes.’ It felt right. I’m sorry we went over, but the emotion in the crowd felt good.”
In early October, Moxley signed a five-year contract extension to remain in AEW and part of the deal included him coaching talent as a Producer. As Saraya noted, Moxley’s wife Renee Paquette is one of Saraya’s best friends, so they all worked together to set up the Full Gear match.