Jon Moxley Urges AEW To Remember Its Roots

Jon Moxley has urged AEW to remember its roots and stick to what it set out to be among suggestions that things are changing.

QT Marshall surprised many by announcing his AEW exit and more news was to follow after that. Marshall was apparently unhappy at being removed from Collision at the behest of CM Punk and his relationship with Tony Khan was believed to have suffered as a result.

Reports also suggested QT Marshall believed the company had changed and was heading down a path more akin to New Japan Pro Wrestling, which many fans might have found surprising.

Jon Moxley Says AEW Should Always Be Different

Speaking to Liam Crowley for Comic Book, Jon Moxley stressed the importance of AEW sticking to its original plan and remaining an alternative to WWE. Moxley explained that matches like the controversial Texas Death Match between Adam Page and Swerve Strickland are where AEW can really set itself apart from the competition:

When it comes to matches like that, that’s one small thing that we can do differently than anybody else in this sh*t. That was one thing I remember, telling (AEW President) Tony [Khan] when I first came in. ‘If you’re going to put me in one of these matches, be careful what you wish for because I am not in the business of under-delivering.’ I’m not spitting some taglines of like, I’m going to crush your skull with my fingers and pull out your eyeballs and all this sh*t and then we’re not going to do it.

AEW has been able to consistently deliver on that. I think it’s very important for us to always remember where this started in the first place, which was the need in the industry for an alternative. We should always be different. We should always be thinking about what we can deliver that nobody else can. Otherwise, we’re just another wrestling company, of which there have been a million.

Not every single match needs to be chopping each other’s heads off. But that’s one small thing and I definitely feel like I’ve definitely held up my end on that in that small area of the business. If you can’t be the first in a category, create a new category in which you can be the first.

Jon Moxley was more coy when it came to CM Punk’s return to WWE, advising that people didn’t want to know what he thought about Punk declaring that he was “home” on Monday Night Raw.