Jon Moxley calls it “Day Zero.”
That’s the day he walked back into All Elite Wrestling for Dynamite on Aug. 28 in Champaign, Ill., after a two-month hiatus to rehab a hip injury he has been wrestling with that made it difficult to walk.
For him, it’s the day that began what he called a “hard reset and complete restart” of the five-year-old company.
His new AEW is two months old.
“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.”
That break allowed him to step back and led to an epiphany that put the whole creative picture in his head that “nobody else can see” for owner and booker Tony Khan’s company.
“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.”
That night in Champaign, he told interviewer and play-by-play man Tony Schiavone in the ring that “this is not your company anymore.”
On screen, that meant Moxley’s new even-rougher-around-the-edges character and his new Death Riders faction of Claudio Castagnoli, PAC, Wheeler Yuta and Marina Shafir are trying to forcibly hold the company hostage until someone can step up and take it back from them.
Moxley, 38, became AEW world champion for a fourth time by ending Bryan Danielson’s full-time wrestling career and taking the title off him at WrestleDream on Oct. 12.
Moxley called doing so to his friend and former Blackpool Combat Club stablemate the “most beautiful funeral I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes” that he “didn’t get too emotionally attached to.”
During the lead-up to the match, Moxley — in storyline — tried to suffocate Danielson by putting a plastic bag over his head, and Yuta did the same during the post-match attack of the “American Dragon” at WrestleDream, which drew some fan criticism.
The whole presentation has been jarringly different and grittier than what fans might be used to in AEW.
But Moxley felt it needed to be that way.
“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.
Behind the scenes for Moxley, the restart and his storyline are a chance to bring up as much of the other talent around him to build something even more sustainable for the company moving forward. He wants AEW to be a place “not just about putting on great wrestling shows” but that makes “great people.”
He hopes wrestling can potentially be the North Star for others that it has been for him.
“Wrestling gave me an opportunity to kind of become a functioning human and gave me a path to walk in the world,” he said.
We have already seen the story try to elevate Darby Allin and Orange Cassidy, who will be Moxley’s challenger for the AEW world championship at Full Gear on Nov. 23 (8 p.m. Bleacher Report, Triller) at Prudential Center.
It will be Cassidy’s first singles match for the AEW world title.
“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.”
Moxley, who has been with the company since its first pay-per-view in May 2019, said changes were needed because of a “mountain of s–t” that happened in what he calls the old AEW before Day Zero.
Easily the most public of those were numerous circumstances centered around CM Punk, from his real-life backstage brawl with The Elite after All Out 2022 and his backstage altercation with Jack Perry at All In 2023 that ultimately led to Punk’s firing before his return to WWE last November.
Moxley chose different examples to illustrate why a hard look and total company refresh is needed.
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.”
He said the company may have been so successful that it “broke through the dirt” quicker than it was able to effectively handle. In less than four years, AEW went from two hours of live television and four pay-per-views with Warner Bros. Discovery to five hours — four of which are live — on TV and nine pay-per-views for this year.
“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.
That idea makes this the likely ideal time for an AEW refresh with TV ratings steady but lacking growth and ticket sales for its weekly shows down as it gets set to begin its multiyear media rights extension with WBD. AEW will have four hours of live television with Dynamite and Collison — also simulcast on Max — and its pay-per-views will move to the streaming service.
The deal is worth $185 million per year when all elements are taken into account, according to Variety.
For Moxley, this is not the time to rest on their laurels and believe success is just going to keep coming. It should be seen as an opportunity for talent to take advantage of the deal and pull themselves up.
“That’s all great, but this isn’t a time to celebrate. You didn’t just win the Super Bowl,” Moxley said. “There’s no time to go to f–king Disney World, you know? I mean, this is an opportunity, right? That’s what not what that is. Now, we have work to do. Here’s what’s possible.
“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’s why Moxley hopes to remold how AEW thinks creatively.
His current storyline has been playing out over all of AEW’s programming — something rarely seen during the company’s history. One of his promos that opened a Dynamite was shot while the Death Riders were riding in the back of a pickup truck on their way to the arena.
“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.”
Elements of his current story — especially with Danielson — have been compared by fans to Terry Funk turning heel on Ric Flair in 1981 for Jim Crockett Promotions in one of the most successful stories of that era and has a slight nWo feel with how his group is beating down the babyfaces en masse, inside and outside the arena.
But he wants it to be made clear that, while his character may be questioning and insulting the rest of the AEW talent’s motivation, heart and abilities, it couldn’t be more different behind the scenes.
“I’m beating the s–t out of a lot of guys, you know, I’m talking a lot of s–t, but in no way am I beating up a bunch of lazy kids, like, I’m you know, Clint Eastwood on the lawn, or something like that,” Moxley said. “In no way is it like that. I’m an advocate for these people, and maybe the only guy standing up for these guys in the locker room.”
His goal is to create better habits and a better understanding that anything with an AEW logo on it needs to be held to the highest standards because it reflects on everyone in the company and not doing so would be a “blatant disrespect” to the paying fans. He wants to create an environment that’s “inhospitable for bulls–t.”
“I’m just kind of excited about the new kind of attitude you’re feeling, the energy that you’re feeling in the locker room, backstage and the in the arena, just everything surrounding AEW,” Moxley said. “It’s a different kind of attitude.”
It’s all part of his ambitious pursuit he hopes can be shared by everyone in the company, from the on-screen talent to the production crew and fans as it manifests.
Everyone will “be moving in the same direction” toward it.
“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.”
