Jon Moxley's Appalling Masterpiece
Is AEW's Death Riders arc an incongruous blunder or a genius exercise in pro wrestling?
AEW’s first PPV of 2025, Revolution at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, cannot be considered anything short of a rousing success. From a packed house with a hot crowd to the buzz leading up to and coming out of the event, AEW is riding a wave of core fan enthusiasm it has not seen since the summer of 2023 ahead of its Wembley Stadium debut. Expectations for this event were lofty and in most ways it met or exceeded them. That is, expectations for all but one aspect of the card: Jon Moxley’s world championship program, which many fans have been underwhelmed by up to this point.
After two months of build toward this world title match, a lot of effort narrowing the scope of the feud from its unwieldy and nebulous initial concept down into a more personal grudge had shifted common sentiment from general annoyance to something closer to apathy and acceptance. But even with these low expectations, fans were disappointed by the match and left with one glaring question: Why?
Why have they stuck with this program for so long?
Why are two bonafide wrestling legends, two geniuses of their craft, struggling to connect with the AEW core audience?
Why did this match go on last, following three consecutive instant classics, serving as a mediocre capstone to what should have been an all-time great wrestling event?
To answer the first question, dozens of theories have been postulated. Jon Moxley’s ego, Tony Khan’s ignorance, the stubbornness of AEW creative to pivot away from existing plans… These are just some of what’s been floated by critics to explain why something they dislike marches onward, undaunted by criticism.
To answer the second question, you might hear that both guys are washed up or both guys were never that good to begin with.
But the true answer to everything may lie in the answer to the third question, an answer that may have been staring us in the face ever since Jon Moxley showed up in the closing moments of All Out six months ago and put a plastic bag over Bryan Danielson’s head, kickstarting this polarizing, frustrating, and possibly brilliant arc from one of AEW’s founding fathers.
In the young mythos of All Elite Wrestling, Jon Moxley is perceived as the ultimate stabilizer. His shock debut at AEW’s inaugural event, Double or Nothing 2019, helped to legitimize the nascent company; here was a globally recognized wrestling star, in his prime, choosing to cast his lot in with an upstart challenger amidst a static landscape long ruled by Vince McMahon. At Revolution 2020 he was crowned AEW world champion just two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the entire world to a screeching halt, threatening the very existence of AEW. His steady presence, his 11 title defences, his inherent gravitas and intensity guided the young company through a tumultuous and uncertain year into calmer waters, setting the foundation for a massive rebound in 2021. Come 2022, AEW turned to him twice more to helm the ship through turbulence: first in the summer when CM Punk broke his foot and abdicated the world championship he’d won just 3 days earlier; then again in the fall when CM Punk dropped the title due to a backstage altercation and tearing his pectoral muscle.
Whenever AEW has needed someone to steady the wheel, they’ve entrusted Jon Moxley with that responsibility. Because of this recurrent history, his actions at All Out 2024 were all the more shocking. The beloved Bryan Danielson, his body falling apart yet still triumphant in defending the AEW World Championship, went to embrace his close friend and stablemate only to be betrayed and brutalized in horrific fashion.
The great stabilizer of AEW had thrown everything into chaos.
As Danielson is carted out in an ambulance, Moxley lectures:
“I hope nobody thinks I enjoyed that. I didn’t. I’m not gonna enjoy any moment of what needs to be done but it needs to be done nonetheless. I would like nothing more than to have Bryan Danielson standing by my side, but Bryan… quite frankly you don’t have the stomach for this. Over two years ago I made a commitment, we made a commitment to build something real, something tangible that would last for years and years long after we’re gone. Something sustainable. Something to take pride in. An idea that couldn’t be destroyed or subjugated… Not for money, not for recognition, but because that was something worth doing. But we didn’t do it, Mr. Patience. Mr. Empathy. Mr. The Greatest Man I’ve Ever Known. I look around and all I see is egos out of control. Everywhere I look it permeates AEW. It’s crawling with egos out of control and I can’t take it anymore! Blood alone moves the wheels of history… I’m no villain, but I’m no hero. Now I know why God put me here. I’m the one true king of these lands. We tried your way Bryan. Diplomacy has failed. Today, I choose war.”
One week prior, Moxley had ominously told Tony Schiavone:
“It’s gonna take some time for everybody to wrap their brains around this, but we’re gonna start right now. Listen to me. This is not your company anymore.”
Nobody could imagine what was coming.
Here now was a different Moxley than we’d ever seen in AEW: sinister, instilled with self-righteous purpose, but also weighed down by what he felt he needed to do.
“I can only hope that one day, Bryan, you'll understand. It's gotta be this way. It's gotta be this way... But I don't have the time to worry about that right now. Stakes are too high.”
In the weeks after the All Out betrayal, he pried away Darby Allin’s world title shot and proceeded to pulverize Danielson into retirement, recapturing AEW’s top prize in the process. At his side stood Claudio Castagnoli, The Bastard PAC, Marina Shafir, and Danielson’s protege Wheeler Yuta. This was now Moxley the tyrant, “Dictator Jon” as MJF had dubbed him years earlier.
“Regarding the AEW World Championship, nothing has changed. Nothing is different... Nothing has changed since the moment I arrived in AEW. Nobody owns that belt. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It doesn’t belong to Bryan Danielson or anybody else. It’s for the position and only one man has ever sat in that chair. That is me. Somebody spent a lot of money on that belt and it’s really supposed to mean something. It’s gold and leather and when I look at it’s a symbol of everything I hate in this sport. It’s a symbol of everything I've been fighting against for years: everything that AEW was NOT SUPPOSED TO BE. If nobody else is gonna say it, I’ll say it. Nothing comes for free in this world.”
Throughout the rest of 2024, the Death Riders wreaked havoc on AEW programming. Moxley decreed that young guys and undercarders have been resting on their laurels, happy and content to draw a paycheck. Some of them stepped up and tried to fight back but were swatted down in short order. Darby Allin flung his entire self at them hoping that if he goes down, then he at least takes them down with him. His reward for this valiant effort was being thrown down a flight of stairs. Orange Cassidy, an old foe of Moxley who’s beaten him before, tries to dethrone him and nearly gets killed in the process. Moxley and his squad of thugs seem indomitable and the AEW World Championship remains hidden from sight, presumably safeguarded inside a briefcase handcuffed to Moxley’s silent enforcer Shafir.
As 2024 closed and the war for AEW’s soul continued into 2025, a new challenger stepped forward: WWE legend Adam Copeland.
Wait. What?
Copeland, now stylized as simply “Cope”, had done tremendous work in AEW since his arrival at the end of 2023. Coming in after 25 years at WWE (nine years of which were spent outside the ring due to a critical neck injury) there were major questions about how well the man formerly known as “Edge” would adapt to AEW’s more physical, athletic, up-tempo wrestling style. While he certainly was no Will Ospreay or Konosuke Takeshita, Cope displayed a more dynamic and adaptive style than he’d done in two decades and cemented his AEW run with a tremendous feud against longtime friend Christian Cage, winning the TNT title in the process. Cope was pushing himself to crazy limits in AEW, to the extent he got sidelined for the back half of 2024 after breaking his leg on an insane splash off the top of a steel cage.
His return at the final AEW event of 2024 – World’s End – was greeted with all the customary warmth you’d expect for a star returning from injury.
That warmth soon turned to skepticism, however, as fans rightly began to wonder: is this the right guy to carry the flag against Moxley? Don’t get me wrong, Edge, Adam Copeland, Cope… whatever you want to call him is a bonafide legend of wrestling and has endeared himself to the AEW audience through fierce passion and consistent, quality performances. Despite that, when you think of “an AEW guy” you’d get past a hundred other talents (some of which aren’t even in the company anymore) before settling on him as the great hero to represent AEW against Moxley and the Death Riders.
As this curious choice raises eyebrows, another aspect of the main event scene comes under scrutiny: the general booking of Jon Moxley. Wars “for the soul of the company” are a dime a dozen in wrestling, and in AEW such arcs have been attempted a couple times before but always sputtered out… after all, companies don’t have souls, people do (and sometimes people’s souls are the focal point of a PPV, but that’s a story for another day). The concept is inherently flawed. If the promos are solid and the matches are good and the booking makes sense, however, wrestling fans will forgive the corniness and stay on the ride for a while, and through the final three months of 2024 most fans were of a patient mindset: Sure, we’ll let it play out for a bit.
But when the calendar turned over to 2025, we began to see clearly a man who’d waxed poetic about being an unstoppable king, an overwhelming force of nature, a cleansing fire to the toxic landscape he saw AEW to be… Well, now he was behaving like a coward. Constant match interference, sneak attacks, fleeing the ring when the numbers were disadvantageous… This is the guy who’s supposed to be holding “AEW’s soul” in his despotic vice grip? This ultimate villain was springing traps on… The Rock n Roll Express?
It’s common for heels to be hypocrites, that’s a tale as old as time. But in the programming, it began to feel as if the creative direction was hypocritical. The initial grand, sweeping, dark message of Moxley had gotten muddier and muddier as his words remained cryptic, but his actions on screen became those of a standard type of heel we’ve seen so many times before, from Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen to Roman Reigns and the Bloodline. And now this supposed existential threat to AEW was being challenged by a man in Cope who’d barely been in AEW for a cup of coffee.
Fans were right to wonder, “What the hell is going on?” The noise of the skepticism grew so loud that Moxley and his crew took to “Close Up” with Renee Pacquette (Moxley’s wife, of course) to address the skepticism and reiterate their mission statement.
Claudio: “Jon gave up everything to follow his vision. His vision was raw competition between the best wrestlers in the world… When AEW started, who was the man to kickstart it? … But as the vision grew, there were cracks… Same thing happened to BCC. When it started it was about pushing each other to the absolute max, making each other as humanly possible. But then what happened? That vision got watered down. Who's to blame? We all are to blame.
“Every single time somebody got hurt, every single time something bad happened to the company, guess who they came back to? Jon. Every single time they needed somebody to step up, of anybody that could have… And yes, you know who I'm talking about… You didn't. He did. Every single time.”
PAC: AEW never became what it was supposed to be. I hate the management, I hate the locker room, and most of all I loathe the culture. Somewhere that rewards the manipulative and emboldens those without shame… We are not brothers, we are not family, we are professionals who give a shit, we are sick and tired of sitting around waiting for change… So now we are the change, pro wrestling guerillas who share the same obsession: to usher in the end.
Claudio: “He has a vision. We are fixing all the cracks. We are not destroyers, we are builders laying a beautiful foundation for the future.”
Moxley: “Everybody's got questions. They're not prepared for the answers. We are one mistake away… One. We are one bad decision away from setting this business back 20 years. Who's gonna take responsibility for that? I bear all the responsibilities here. I take all the bullets here. So I will bear the responsibility for my generation. Claudio's generation, PAC’s generation, our generation all across the world: we inherited a nuclear wasteland. And we built it up year after year after year into the business you see today. But we are one mistake away from going back to Ground Zero. Who's gonna take responsibility? Who's gonna point fingers at who on that day? I'll take responsibility for it all. My vision is not one Jon Moxley, my vision is a thousand Jon Moxleys. I wanna back-fill this place, I want it to last for 20 years, for long after I'm dead.
“We're gonna build something. We're watering a seed. We're gonna grow something with strong roots and a strong base that's gonna stand firm and strong against any storm… Everybody can be on our team. But you better show up every day and give everything you have. You better be at 100% and you better drop your fucking ego at the door. If you can't do that, pack your shit and get out
“Why do you need to see the world championship? To take a picture? Is this a petting zoo? You don't know what it means, what it's about, what it takes… I am the AEW World Championship. It's not something you win, it's not something you hold, it's not something you show off and pose for pictures with. It lives in here (points to heart). It's gotta be cultivated and grown.
“I'm trying to build a thousand Jon Moxleys. So I will put them through what I went through and worse. That might not be pretty, that might be ugly, that might be uncomfortable but that's the only way I know how to do it. That's the only way our generation knows how to do it.
“You're looking for answers but you don't even know what fucking game you're playing. You don't even see the board.”
Claudio: “We are not here to kill AEW. Quite the opposite. We are here to lay the beautiful foundation… This will be our greatest work and it will last forever.”
This interview was done on what had previously been a primarily “shoot style” interview series where wrestlers spoke to Renee out of character about their lives and their work. This session with the Death Riders, however, was seemingly done in character, the same character we’d been seeing for months. Here at the end of January 2025, occurring simultaneously with AEW seemingly “flipping a switch” and beginning to produce some of it’s best and most consistent television in company history, their words echoed much of what Moxley had said months earlier to various outlets from outside the wrestling bubble while promoting title defenses at Full Gear and Worlds End.
To the New York Post on 11/11/24:
“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.
“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.”
To TV Insider on 11/20/24:
Interviewer: How much of what we’re seeing on TV is how you truly feel about the company?
“It’s very real. I’ve never been much of a putting-on-act kind of wrestler. Everything is always informed by where I’m at in real life outside the ring. I do take inspiration from all corners of the universe and funnel it through. At this point when it comes to my career and life, I just have no time for bullsh*t anymore. I don’t have time to beat around the bush. I’m not necessarily alone in my thoughts and feelings. My feelings and motivations are quite ubiquitous throughout AEW. I’m just the one verbalizing it and getting to move it into action. Though I can’t do it by myself.
“I’m resetting the clock in my head mentally. As far as I’m concerned, this is Day Zero. We’re a couple of months into a fresh start in this wilderness that is the land of the pro wrestling landscape. We have a lot of objectives to accomplish…I’m a servant of the fans, the ones who pay money to buy tickets and pay for parking and have to work the next morning and still stay out late to come to a show. People who supported us for this whole time and aren’t on the ride yet will join the ride. I’m a servant of all the people here at AEW who want to be part of something and believe in what this could be.
“There is so much more to accomplish and at stake. This is exactly where I wanted to be. Every day is a battle. The future is uncertain and unpredictable, but the potential for this company is so great.
“The potential of AEW is so f*ckin’ huge. We’re not even scratching the surface of it. Just the roster of wrestlers is this ridiculous bounty of riches. Just a ridiculously stacked roster of the best wrestlers in the world. So many people you haven’t even seen yet of what they can do. I’ve seen what they can do. I can imagine what they can become if we water that seed and let it grow.”
Interviewer: What’s next for AEW?
“There is no me being in there and losing. Everything is different now. It is life or death. AEW has to be a success. If it’s not, the business gets set back another 20 fucking years. I’m not willing to go through that again. Others who I’ve known for 15-20 years are not willing to go through that again. It’s at the hands of our generation. This is what we wanted to do and all we’ve ever wanted to do. The future is in our hands. Whatever AEW will become in the future is up to us.
“Frankly, in five years nothing has been built. We’re going to build it right now. There has been no flag. AEW has not really nailed down its identity being a young company, and that’s fine. There has been no flag for everyone to unify to say this is who we are, what we do and the direction we’re going. We’re going to plant our flag. That’s starting with me and the few people watching my back and others. We’re going to demand more of everybody around us. We’re going to unify behind one flag and march forward and turn this into what it can be.
To CBS Sports on 11/24/24
"I spent about two months thinking, reading books and walking around downtown Cincinnati at three o'clock in the morning," Moxley told CBS Sports ahead of AEW Full Gear on Saturday. "I had a vision of a future that could be ours. A vision that could belong to everybody. A world where everyone can be successful. A world where everyone's strengths are brought to the forefront. A vision of a world that is inhospitable to bullshit.”
"It's only five years old. You start with two hours of TV, that's one thing. Then three, then five. Now it's a different thing," Moxley said. "If you don't have the infrastructure to support it, you fall to the level of your systems. If the branch pops out of the dirt before it's ready, it will not have the structural integrity to hold the fruit it bears. I think we've maybe gotten things out of order.
"Crawl, walk, run. Maybe we went from a certain cadence of walk and tried to jump into a run and things got a little out of balance and split the differential. It's just about getting into the right gear for the speed you're attempting to drive. We're going to do that. I'm actually quite excited about it.”
"I found it challenging to find anyone who would take responsibility for anything," Moxley said of AEW in the past. "'It's not my fault' was something I'd hear bouncing around the hallways of AEW quite ubiquitously. Essentially what it boils down to is that I'll take responsibility for everything.”
"I'm very optimistic about everything... I don't think there's a more polite way to say this. I don't give a single f---. I have not one single f--- to give. That is the attitude that I'm moving forward with. That is the attitude my group has. Everything I'm trying to achieve now is very much the hill I'm prepared to die on.”
And then lastly, to Yahoo Sports on 1/14/25
“We’re building. It’s about a lot more than what happens in the ring,” Moxley says. “Building something sustainable for the future that we can take pride in, we’ve been doing that for the past few months.
“It’s about a mindset and an approach of taking pride in what we do. We have a lot of guys and girls that are part of it. I’m pretty proud, but it’s a long game and it’s little tiny victories every day and a constant learning process. It’s really exciting.
“Any time you step into the ring, any time you get the camera pointed at you with the light on, any time you do anything, it’s going to be whatever you make it,” Moxley says. “Everybody’s a good wrestler at AEW. I don’t know if there’s ever been a roster assembled of this many purely great, get-in-the-ring-and-wrestle pro wrestlers. There’s so much more to it though, to put yourself in a position to use those skills and capitalize with them. You can see some guys evolving to the next level beyond just being good wrestlers. It’s very gratifying to see.
“I don’t work for AEW. I work for all of the people that need this place to succeed, that’s the way I look at it," he says. "For this place to succeed, we’ve got to operate at the highest level at every level. That’s what we accept if you’re going to be a part of this team. I feel a responsibility to these people because to be successful in wrestling, they’ve given and sacrificed their lives for the pursuit of this, as I had. I am but a servant to the pursuit of helping the whole thing, raising it up and bringing along as many people as we can.
As a fan of AEW, that all sounds great! But how exactly is that reflecting in what we’ve been seeing on the screen? How is that goal being accomplished? What even is the goal beyond vague platitudes and metaphors about growing something sustainable?
Maybe if we look back just a bit, we can begin to find some semblance of an answer.
Immediately prior to this Death Riders arc, Moxley had spent several months as a placeholder IWGP Heavyweight Champion. With a roster recently depleted by the exodus of Will Ospreay, Jay White, and the centerpiece of the promotion in Kazuchika Okada, New Japan Pro Wrestling was in a state of flux. They had put their top belt on Tetsuya Naito, one of their last reliably drawing stars, at the start of 2024 but Naito – metaphorically and literally – did not have the legs for a sustained run with the company's top title. And so with a slew of US dates on the calendar, NJPW turned to Moxley as AEW had done so many times before. In this run as their stabilizer, he saw firsthand the dire straits of a company with insufficient younger talent to carry the brand as stars age out or leave entirely.
Returning to AEW later that summer, who could blame Moxley for seeing another company riddled with question marks at the top of the card, questions that date back to its inception?
Chris Jericho was a duly prestigious choice for inaugural AEW world champion. Next of course came Moxley. Then you had Kenny Omega, arguably the best wrestler of the past decade. All made sense, but all were men who’d made themselves into headliners elsewhere first. After Omega came Hangman Adam Page, whose journey to the title is among the greatest stories of modern professional wrestling, but his star shown less bright during his subsequent title reign as CM Punk became the focal point of AEW, as well as its next champion. After Punk’s reign crashed and burned twice, Moxley was tasked with righting the ship and transitioning to Maxwell Jacob Freeman, an AEW homegrown star just like Hangman. Over the course of a year, what started off as a very strong title reign for MJF limped to a very weak finish as the injury to Adam Cole threw creative plans into disarray and they were unable to recover. Samoa Joe stepped in to pick up the pieces and later passed the mantle to Swerve Strickland, who was the final champion before Bryan Danielson’s short reign and the initiation of the ongoing Death Riders angle.
Of the 13 AEW World Championship reigns, 10 of those reigns have come from eight different men with 20+ year careers, all of whom established their legacies prior to AEW even existing.
Again, who could blame Moxley for seeing this and thinking, “This is not sustainable”?
With that in mind, perhaps we have a clearer understanding of Moxley’s real-life aims with his reign and the Death Riders story. But if we are any closer to understanding the why, it still doesn’t explain the how of this endeavor.
Initially, the actions and reactions to the Death Riders on screen made sense. They terrorized the complacent, the underachievers, the young guys stuck in holding patterns. And we saw some step up, like Private Party and Komander and Powerhouse Hobbs. All the while, Moxley and his band of goons let the vast majority of established stars go about their business uninterrupted. We saw the EVPs Matthew and Nicholas Jackson look on and fiddle while Rome burned, later high-tailing it out of town before they could get caught in the crossfire. This truly did seem like a resetting of the table, shaking up things and seeing who from the bottom would step up.
But then, in stepped Adam Copeland and we got a feud that played like a wedding band covering wrestling’s greatest hits: Dusty and Magnum vs the Horsemen, WCW vs NWO, Austin vs the Corporation, hero of the month vs the Bloodline. This was not “laying the foundation for a beautiful future”, it was two guys with nothing to prove retreading old ground. Was all that stuff Moxley’s been preaching just empty rhetoric?
As this transpired, elsewhere in AEW things began to heat up. The oft-neglected women’s division was now producing legendary television through the “Timeless” Toni Storm/Mariah May feud and a recalibrated mid-card. The tag titles regained their former prestige and prominence once claimed by the Hurt Syndicate. Kenny Omega was finally back from life-threatening illness and settling his score with the Don Callis Family, alongside Will Ospreay. Hangman and MJF finally popped the cork on a feud fans have clamored for since day one of AEW. Swerve Strickland and Ricochet conjured up an electric blood-feud seemingly out of thin air. Positive fan sentiment toward AEW surged with nearly every episode of TV being a homerun. When the card for Revolution became finalized, many hailed it as – on paper – the best the company had ever put together.
And yet, there still on that scintillating card hung the albatross of a world title match. “Well, it’ll probably be a decent enough match and the rest of the scheduled matches more than make up for it,” I and many others rationalized. “Hopefully it doesn’t close the show…”
What we ended up getting in Los Angeles was more frustrating, confounding, and fascinating than any could have imagined. For me, it might have been the missing piece of the puzzle that finally snapped everything into place.
Picture this as your main event match:
Prolonged striking exchanges to begin, then the action spills to the outside.
This section of the match stays on the outside for several more minutes.
After an apron neckbreaker, action returns to the ring where Wrestler 1 goes heavy into working Wrestler 2’s neck. He spends as much time pacing the ring and talking to the crowd as he does working on his opponent.
Eight minutes in, the crowd isn't alive yet. They’re recovering from an adrenaline dump caused by the match prior to this one and the current men in the ring have a lot of work to do to wake them back up. Wrestler 1 and Wrestler 2 know how to call things on the fly and switch gears to get the crowd where they want them. Here and now, they stick to the script.
Wrestler 2 makes a brief comeback but Wrestler 1 puts an end to that with a cutter. Instead of going for the pin, he taunts the crowd again. The camera cuts to a faction looking on in a sky suite for seemingly no reason (they'd already been shown much earlier in the night studying a different match).
Wrestler 2 counters a piledriver into a DDT and both use it as a rest spot.
We're 10 minutes in and Wrestler 2 starts his comeback with a series of lariats.
He hits a superplex on Wrestler 1 but it gets a two-count. Then Wrestler 2 locks in a crossface but Wrestler 1 gets a rope break.
Wrestler 2 spears Wrestler 1 to the floor from the apron in the first move that excites the crowd. Wrestler 1 reverses a whip and sends Wrestler 2 into the stairs. Then he pulls up the mats and exposes the hard, bare floor, but all we get from it is Wrestler 2 dumping Wrestler 1 with a back drop, followed by Wrestler 1 hitting a curb stomp.
Back in the ring, a two-count.
We're 15 minutes in and Wrestler 1 hits a piledriver. Two-count.
Wrestler 1 locks on his bulldog choke and it's well over a minute before Wrestler 2 gets a rope break.
Wrestler 1 starts jawing the referee. He introduces a chair that the ref has to get rid of, Wrestler 2 gets a roll-up with a visual two-count then Wrestler 1 kicks him out into a ref bump.
Wrestler 1 hits his finisher but there's no ref. Wrestler 1 decides to go for a devastating chair shot as retribution for what Wrestler 2 has done to the other members of his group. The crowd comes fully alive after 20 minutes. Wrestler 2 kicks the chair into Wrestler 1’s face. Double clothesline and both men are laid out once again.
Wrestler 3 walks to the ring, feigns turning on Wrestler 1, but takes out Wrestler 2. Wrestler 4 hits the ring and the crowd is finally up and hollering. He clears Wrestler 3, but in trying to hit Wrestler 1 with a briefcase he accidentally lays out Wrestler 2. Wrestler 3 and Wrestler 4 brawl away from the ring and to the back. Ref is finally back in and it gets a two-count.
Wrestler 2 hits a spear. Two-count.
It's time for finisher spam. Wrestler 2 hits two more spears. At what's surely the end of it, the ref gets pulled out by a man in a black hoodie. It's Wrestler 5 and he finally, after many months, cashes in his contract for the world title. “Heist of the Century” is running through everyone's minds.
Now 25 minutes in, the crowd is molten hot. There's uncertainty and anticipation in the air. Wrestler 5 hits a spear and the fans are rabid for it. Two-count. Wrestler 5 hits his finisher. Broken up by Wrestler 1 locking him into a bulldog choke. Despite his best efforts at cleverly sneaking a pin while still locked into the choke, Wrestler 5 cannot hang onto consciousness.
Ref calls for the bell. Return to status quo.
If you did not know these wrestlers were Jon Moxley, Adam Copeland, Wheeler Yuta, Jay White, and Christian Cage, where do you think it would have taken place? Was this not beat-for-beat the 1980s southern wrestling-influenced main event style WWE has used for decades?
Have you not seen this exact match dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times before?
After the bell, as Wrestler 1 – as Jon Moxley – flees with his presumed world championship briefcase, there's a beautiful moment, where he's blocked from leaving by Prince Nana. Stuck at the exit, Moxley is jawing with a manager who has forged his own path for two decades. The camera pans up, and there high above on the railing is perched Swerve Strickland, an ascendant star who only began to shine after leaving the other place, a man who now carries the torch for this company where he's grown into a headliner. He jumps from that absurd height and stomps Moxley down.
The crowd is rapturous, and the show ends with singing and dancing as Swerve's music plays.
Post-show, almost instantaneously, questions and confusion arise. With such a stacked lineup, how could anyone in their right mind have Mox vs Cope close the show? It was obvious their starpower, their status, and the legacy of the AEW World Championship would not be able to justify having this type of match conclude what could have been the greatest event in AEW history, a defining moment for the young company. It stood in such stark contrast not just to what came before it on this night, but also to what AEW presents itself as and aspires to be. This? THIS is what you chose to be the final, lasting impression of Revolution? Or rather, what would have been the final impression, had Swerve Strickland not arrived in the closing moments to save the night.
____________________
The 2025 AEW Revolution card in full:
Hangman Page vs. MJF: the standard-bearer match between two AEW day-one originals built up from obscurity into faces of the franchise.
Mercedes Mone vs. Momo Watanabe: a stiff joshi-style encounter where a top star gets worked over brutally.
Ricochet vs. Swerve Strickland: a heated grudge match between two men previously stifled, now allowed to reach their full potential.
Kazuchika Okada vs. Brody King: a strong-style match with Okada's chest turned into hamburger meat by the end of it.
The Hurt Syndicate vs. The Outrunners: a couple of older vets who were told they didn't have much left to offer against a comedy team that ascended from nothing to becoming fan favorites.
Toni Storm vs. Mariah May: a women's bloodbath and a capstone to end the deepest, most focused and fully-realized feud in North American women’s wrestling history.
Konosuke Takeshita vs. Kenny Omega: a pure fighting spirit showcase, replete with heavy selling, tons of kickouts, and a sudden finish.
Will Ospreay vs. Kyle Fletcher: a warzone spotfest between two exceptional athletes that have no fear and recognize no limits.
Jon Moxley vs Cope: a match that could have and indeed has ended plenty of successful WWE pay-per-views for the last twenty years.
In isolation, the main event was a well-worked match. Even its lumbering first 10 minutes are rational as a cool-down period for an audience that was exhausted by what had come before. Aside from one awkwardly taken DDT halfway through, it was executed with the precision expected of the veteran masters involved. It reached a thrilling climax that had everyone in the building on their feet. So why, then, does it seem so distasteful after the fact?
Many would point to it occupying the slot deserved more by The Hollywood Ending, and they would have a case.
Many would point to the rocky build-up to the match. They, too, would have a case.
But the blunt reality is that if the match was a sweeping, dynamic, rollercoaster epic like several other matches on the same card, of a kind that AEW has delivered so often, of a kind that Moxley’s next adversary Swerve Strickland had just delivered, the criticism would be sparse if existent at all.
This match was rejected because it was not AEW.
If anyone on the roster should know what type of match is not AEW, it should be the man whose debut at the their first ever show in 2019 stamped in bold letters that this would not be just another flash-in-the-pan promotion, the man who always rose to the occasion and carried the flag of AEW through its darkest hours, the man who left the safety of wrestling’s hegemonic empire to pursue an artistic vision that wasn’t embraced at the highest levels of American pro wrestling. Jon Moxley is a wrestler born in brutality, who first rose to prominence in the savage environs of Combat Zone Wrestling, poking at the boundaries of extreme violence in wrestling (something he considers an “addiction”, per his own biography). Jon Moxley relishes being provocative and controversial. But Jon Moxley is also nothing if not deliberate, as he’s keen to remind us. So what, then, could he possibly have intended by delivering something so tame, so incongruous with his own personal taste and his wider match catalog? What did he expect in delivering something so standard and familiar to the point of triteness? Why would he capstone a historically great event with something so not AEW?
Édouard Manet was born into one of the more prominent aristocratic families of mid-19th Century Paris. After a youth spent being guided toward more respectable careers in law or the navy, Manet’s father eventually acquiesced to his son’s wish for an education in art.
Manet quickly established a reputation as unconventional. After opening his studio in 1856, he submitted canvases to the Paris Salon, most of which were rejected. Works like The Absinthe Drinker (1859) were dismissed as far too crude – both in subject matter and composition – and works like Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Auguste Manet (1860) were chided for being “incomplete” by the Parisian scene’s foremost critics. Despite this reception, Manet began cultivating an ardent following among his fellow young artists who hailed him as a visionary unbeholden to norms of the time. With 1862’s Music in the Tuileries, the besieged artist fired a shot across the bow of the Paris establishment: in an era of mythological, historical, grand subjects, Manet painted in bold brushstrokes a dense scene of his friends and contemporaries gathering to enjoy music at a concert.
Now stripped of all pretense, Manet began work on his masterpiece, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass).
Rejected by the Paris Salon in 1863, it became the central attraction of the Salon des Refusés (literally, the Exhibition of Rejects), which Napoleon III established to house work from the young, bold Parisians who were the talk of the town yet could find no place to exhibit. There, critics once again chastised the brushwork, considering it to be crass, as if “done by a floor mop”. This was not done without purpose, however. The expressive, loose strokes are but one abandonment of traditional form. More blatantly abandoned are conventional structures of geometric perspective and proportion. Instead of chiaroscuro, Manet uses “a-plat” spots and dashes of color, netting contrasts together into a distorted – yet always deliberate – sense of space to create its full scene.
It has components of Renaissance classics, but the two men in its foreground are clad in modern outfits. This is no mythological setting, there is no allegory to be gleaned; this is the world as it is around us. These are real people set in a forest clearing by a river. Its nude figure is not in a graceful pose. The stark, unnatural lighting puts her in a sort of studio glow as she ignores her companions and her surroundings. She gazes directly at the viewer. She is not an object of desire and we are not in control–she is.
Indeed, its central nude became the focal point of criticism, lambasted as unfit for “polite society”. What the establishment rejected as vulgar and sloppy, however, Manet’s supporters hailed as radical genius. His friend, Emile Zola, dismissed their pretenses and declared that their prudish fixation blinded them from seeing – literally – the bigger picture:
This nude woman has scandalized the public, who see only her in the canvas. “My God! What indecency: a woman without the slightest covering between two clothed men! That has never been seen.” And this belief is a gross error, for in the Louvre there are more than fifty paintings in which are found mixes of persons clothed and nude. But no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized. The crowd has kept itself moreover from judging The Luncheon on the Grass like a veritable work of art should be judged; they see in it only some people who are having a picnic, finishing bathing, and they believed that the artist had placed an obscene intent in the disposition of the subject, while the artist had simply sought to obtain vibrant oppositions and a straightforward audience. Painters, especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not have this preoccupation with the subject which torments the crowd above all; the subject, for them, is merely a pretext to paint, while for the crowd, the subject alone exists. Thus, assuredly, the nude woman of The Luncheon on the Grass is only there to furnish the artist the occasion to paint a bit of flesh. That which must be seen in the painting is not a luncheon on the grass; it is the entire landscape, with its vigors and its finesses, with its foregrounds so large, so solid, and its backgrounds of a light delicateness; it is this firm modeled flesh under great spots of light, these tissues supple and strong, and particularly this delicious silhouette of a woman wearing a chemise who makes, in the background, an adorable dapple of white in the milieu of green leaves. It is, in short, this vast ensemble, full of atmosphere, this corner of nature rendered with a simplicity so just, all of this admirable page in which an artist has placed all the particular and rare elements which are in him.
Perhaps this was exactly Manet’s intent with his foreground nude, her pose lifted audaciously from Raphael & Raimondi’s aptly titled Judgment of Paris (c. 1515). As Zola observes, she herself would have fit in perfectly on dozens of other esteemed canvases hanging in the Louvre and admired by the wider culture. For that same culture, the “problem” was her placement into a pastoral setting of modern, common people gathered for a picnic… How dare she be here! This figure, under intense spotlight, glaring directly at the observer both triggers and utilizes one’s conditioned, instinctual response to impropriety - that bashful and sudden aversion of the eyes - to bring heightened attention to everything surrounding it, everything wherein the painter showcases a radical new style and technique. This is no accident. She’s the one in control, remember?
In the decades after its debut, The Luncheon on the Grass inspired movements. Impressionism and Modernism sprung forth from this seed planted by Manet. This vilified canvas paved the way for Renoir, Cézanne, and Monet to abandon tradition and produce masterworks of new forms. This scandalous composition unlocked doors for Munch and Picasso to then kick wide open and explode the boundaries of their medium.
Unto itself, this work was a revolution.
Professional wrestling has always had an identity crisis, never settling on what it is and what it should be. Is it a carny scam, real sport, or theatre of the absurd? Should it be a realistic simulation of combat or a dazzling showcase of choreographed athleticism? Maybe it’s best identified as some combination of all these things. Maybe it’s best identified as none of them at all. The one thing indisputable about pro wrestling is that it strives to be art, for art — whittled down to its core — is that which makes you feel.
AEW is not immune from the inherent identity crisis of pro wrestling. Its founders had a mission statement: to change the world. To their credit, in many ways they succeeded: hundreds if not thousands of jobs have been created, pay and benefits and schedules for the performers have improved, options have been added to the menu for fans. But has AEW impacted lasting change to affect that one indisputable goal, to be that which makes you feel?
For a company that’s so often talked about “Restoring the Feeling,” with stutters and missteps AEW has struggled to define what that feeling actually is. It’s a nebulous thing, ethereal and nigh impossible to grasp. So perhaps the best way to restore “The Feeling” and the only way to define it is by showing us – by reinforcing in us – what it most certainly is not.
“The Feeling” is not a 20-year veteran in his fourth title reign maintaining tyrannical control over the AEW world championship. “The Feeling” is not preying on the weak, fleeing adversity, constantly ambushing opponents, cheating to win every match, and every other trope from the “Heel Wrestling 101” textbook. We know with absolute certainty “The Feeling” is not the match that closed AEW Revolution.
No, “the Feeling” is not what wrestling has always been, but rather what wrestling might be. We saw a glimpse of it in those three matches just before the main event of Revolution, when men and women poured every fiber of their being into making diverse, unconventional, carnal, and deeply personal art that no fan watching at home or in attendance would ever forget. Maybe we saw a glimpse of it when Swerve Strickland made a daring leap and crushed beneath his feet a man who now embodies what wrestling has always been.
We avert our eyes from the indecency of the Revolution main event, though we’ve seen and accepted it and even admired it many times before. In that aversion, our focus turns to everything around it. In everything around it, we see a “beautiful foundation” of possibility. Is this no accident? Is this the design of someone in control?
Revolutions attempt to shrug off the burden of convention, to break the limits imposed by the status quo, a status quo ruthlessly perpetuated by those in power. Sometimes revolutions fail and the potential for progress gets sabotaged for a generation or more as things revert back to how they’ve always been. But sometimes, guided by the hands of undaunted individuals and the spirit of a collective yearning to break free from the stagnant cycle, they succeed and usher in a new era of opportunity and innovation.
In revolutions, the villains are an entrenched few who will not harbor dissent, for whom conformity is virtue and tradition is religion. So if we are to be freed, who will unbind us from stagnation and arm us with innovation and lead us to victory? Who will be the heroes? Who will kill the king?
Jon Moxley began installing himself in his current royal seat via one of pro-wrestling’s most time-honored traditions: manipulating a younger guy and politicking him out of his rightful spot.
After hijacking Darby Allin’s world title match in September 2024, WrestleDream on October 12th saw Moxley claim the title by destroying a man that epitomized the style and the path that paved the way for something like AEW. Truly, who represents the mixture of gritty passion, of athleticism and endurance, of commitment to technical precision over theatrics and grandeur better than Bryan Danielson? Danielson was Moxley’s longtime close friend and partner, and yet he damn near killed him.
None of it brought joy or pleasure to Moxley. Remember what he said:
“I can only hope that one day, Bryan, you'll understand. It's gotta be this way. It's gotta be this way... But I don't have the time to worry about that right now. Stakes are too high.”
A resistance to Moxley and his Death Riders emerged but it was not enough, it was none of the heavy hitters of AEW, and they all got steamrolled. Darby Allin tried taking them out with kamikaze attacks, willing to destroy himself to stop them, and it was still not enough. Allin pleaded for help from Will Ospreay, but Ospreay explained he’s too distracted by the Don Callis Family to commit to stopping Moxley.
The resistance turned to Orange Cassidy, the rare man who has beaten Moxley before, but he’s initially reluctant. He knows what Moxley is capable of and he doesn’t want to go through that type of war again. Only when the Death Riders brutalize Chuck Taylor does OC step forward and finally assume the mantle of opposition.
Moxley welcomes this challenge…
AEW Collision - 11/9/24
Moxley: “I wish I was cold-blooded but I’m not. No, I feel everything. Not just the weight of the AEW World Championship, I feel the weight of the last 5 years. I feel the weight of the dreams and aspirations of every single wrestler who walks through these doors. I feel the weight of everybody else’s mistakes and broken promises. I feel the weight of every single AEW fan who buys a ticket and pays for parking and takes off work and gives us their hard-earned money and time and energy because AEW is what they believe in, what AEW could be. If you don’t like the way I do things… you’re gonna have a chance. Lob my head off. Let it hit the dirt and roll at your feet. Reach down and pick up that crown, put it on your head. See if you like how it feels… You wanna ride with me? You wanna ride in my AEW? We ride into battle every single day to grab pro wrestling by the balls. You better be ready to die on your shield every single day. If you’re not, get out, or you will get taken out.”
Moxley damn near desires being dethroned, but he doesn’t believe OC is up to the monumental task. At Full Gear in late November, he was proven right.
Next comes a four-way title defense at Worlds End in December against three stars who, if they could present a united front, would easily dispatch Moxley. All three challengers – OC, Jay White, and Hangman Page – had defeated Moxley before, with the latter being perhaps the only man in AEW who Moxley fears. But Moxley doesn’t expect a united front and doesn’t believe they can put their egos aside to get the job done.
Dynamite - 12/11/24
Moxley: "I'm a marked man. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I wouldn't have it any other way than being a marked man. It's the only way to live. It's the only way to feel alive. The only way to live is with a knife to your throat, with the dynamite stick burning down to the end of the wick… These guys? This is the problem. They're all about their ego: 'I want the next title shot! No, I want the next title shot!' That's the problem. You let your egos run your lives. Egos run All Elite Wrestling. Nothing is about me. None of this is about me. It's about my people. We do not fight flesh and blood."
Moxley is once again proven right. He dispatches OC who's too stubborn, Hangman who's too controlled by his emotions, and Jay White who's too self-serving. As the champion said, this was not about “flesh and blood”; this was about ideologies and temperament, and both of his won out again.
Throughout the next two months, Cope tries to systematically dismantle Moxley’s junta, but when it gets to the decisive moment on March 9th he is too indoctrinated by the old ways of pro wrestling and loses working an old-fashioned match.
Moxley respects Cope for coming the closest to beating him, and grants one more rematch, this time with no rules.
The new #1 Contender, Swerve Strickland, has undeniable momentum and the fans are fully behind him, so he doesn’t give a damn who wins that rematch.
To his former mentor Cope he says:
“You’re a legend, you’re an icon, but you are standing in the way of the future of All Elite Wrestling, and I will mow you down.”
To Moxley, he says:
“I really used to think you and I were cut from the same cloth, until you mentioned that there was nobody in the back that could hold down the world championship like you can. I really don’t believe you believe anything of what you're saying. We gotta listen to this drivel every week, night in and night out, you standing in the back in boiler rooms talking in riddles. All I see when I look at you, Jon, is true desperation. Desperation is all you have to hold onto, because to catch a maniac, you’ve got to send a maniac…”
As Swerve expounds on how he’s the only challenger with sufficient instincts to usurp the crown, Moxley sneaks up behind him and cracks him with a crowbar.
The King still has a few tricks up his sleeve. He’s not letting go that easy. He still doesn’t believe anyone can go as far as he’s willing to go to carry the flag of AEW and to claim its world championship.
During the rematch against Cope, Moxley reminds us how far he’s willing to go. In a spot so heinous it’s surprising that it was allowed on cable television, Moxley’s back gets impaled by Copeland’s spiked baseball bat. Despite the nails gruesomely clinging and tearing into his flesh, Moxley endures long enough for the Death Riders to arrive and create enough chaos for him to retain his world title once more.
What could it possibly take to depose this man? Three challengers at once couldn’t do it. A sustained war of attrition couldn’t do it. A direct hit from a murder weapon couldn’t do it. Who has the drive, the fire in his heart, and the resilience to kill a king?
Dynamite 3/26/25 - Swerve Strickland calls out Jon Moxley
Swerve:
"Everybody knows exactly why I'm here. I'm here to call out Jon Moxley—not the Death Riders—the AEW World Champion, Jon Moxley. You better get your ass down here right now and look me eye to eye, man to man, if you got the balls to do so."
Jon Moxley enters through the crowd, as always, and stands face-to-face with his next challenger.
Swerve:
"I’ve been allowing things to go on like this for far too long. People have been asking me since October why I haven’t been going after my AEW World Championship. Truth be told, I like to give people enough rope to hang themselves—and that’s you, Jon. Look at you. What happened to you? Jon Moxley used to be revered here in AEW. You and the AEW World Championship used to be synonymous with one another. But now? Look at you. You hide behind Claudio. You hide behind Wheeler Yuta. You hide behind PAC—hell, you even hide behind Marina Shafir.
“This man still has the nerve to say that nobody in the back wants to be World Champion, but truth is, you’re not even worthy enough to be a champion yourself. I think the reason you hide that title in a little briefcase is because you can’t even look at it on your shoulder anymore. Every time you have a championship defense, you narrowly escape… Everything about Jon Moxley, that you used to describe yourself as… That’s now the man looking at you right here, right now."
Claudio appears from nowhere and stands menacingly behind Prince Nana at ringside. Moxley gives a signal to stay put.
Moxley:
"That all sounded great—if you believe it. But this isn’t about me. This is about you. April 6th, Dynasty—it’s you versus you. Swerve vs Swerve at Dynasty. It’s not about me. Stop worrying about me. Who are you, really? What are you, really?
“I know. I listen. I watch. I see everything, I hear everything.
“I know who you are. I know exactly what you are. And I know what you could be. Damn, I’ve had some high hopes for you. But I’ve been disappointed before. On April 6th, I will give you a chance to step in and become everything that you can be. You just have to ask yourself one question: ‘How far am I willing to go?’
“Not tonight, not just April 6th—but every day. When it’s cold, and dark, and you’re in pain and you’re tired. When the world’s bearing down on your shoulders, when you ain’t got no friends left, when everyone’s gunning for you, when you have the weight of the entire world on your shoulders—will you endure? Will you put one foot in front of the other and keep going? Or will you look for a way out? Will you take others with you? There’s a lot of questions you’ve got to ask yourself.
“You’re not what you think you are. You haven’t suffered enough yet.
“But you will suffer… On April 6th.
“My sport has been taken over by billionaires, by Hollywood talent agencies, by kids who see the world through an Instagram filter and don’t know their head from their ass. It’s guys like YOU that give me hope for the future. It’s guys like YOU that make me think everything I put my mind and my soul and my body through, was for a reason. But I ain’t gonna give it to ya. I don’t care what kinda punk-ass organization they’re running around here. I don’t give handouts. So, how far are you willing to go? Me? I’m willing to go the whole way. Right now.
“Shouldn’t be a problem for you. I mean, you are the ‘most dangerous man in AEW’… right?"
They pace around each other like animals ready to pounce. Marina Shafir slithers out from the back and hops on the apron, ready to catch Swerve off-guard, but Swerve is prepared for this and out comes Willow Nightingale holding a lead pipe. Shafir stands down.
Swerve, taunting Moxley:
"What’s wrong, Jon? You finally facing somebody smarter than you? Let’s get this straight—you want to talk unscripted violence? Boy, I am violence. You’ve bled pints; I’ve bled buckets. You’ve *been* in Texas Death Matches; I’ve *won* them. I *am* the most dangerous man in AEW. WHOSE HOUSE?”
The entire building shouts in unison, “SWERVE’S HOUSE”.
Swerve:
“In Philadelphia, in 11 days, I take back that AEW World Championship and I continue lead the Dynasty era. And while I’m doing that, you can keep playing ‘Jon Moxley’ on TV."
The last line sends Moxley retreating out of the ring.
“And while I’m doing that, you can keep playing ‘Jon Moxley’ on TV.”
It’s a line that harkens back to Moxley’s own words from another life entirely, when he - as Dean Ambrose - sought to supplant John Cena from the top of WWE’s food chain. Cena, who had been the top star in wrestling for a decade, was in pursuit of his 16th world championship (funny how history repeats itself) but obstructing his path were Ambrose and the reigning champion, AJ Styles.
As it is now, on that night eight years earlier it was a hungry young lion challenging the veteran with a vice grip on the company’s top spot.
Smackdown - 10/4/16
Ambrose:
“Anybody who’s a threat to you, you undercut them. You cut their legs out from underneath and you stab them in the back. You've been trying to do that to me since day one. But you’re never gonna be able to. You know why, ‘Mr. Hustle’? Because you can’t outwork me. You think you work harder than me because on your day off you fly on your private jet to some award show? Nuh-uh. I’m in this ring every night… blood, sweat, and tears, in wars.
“‘Mr. Loyalty’, the poster-boy for loyalty to the WWE Universe, to these fans, to this business… Check my resume: zero sick days; zero days on the injury list; zero days off, period. More matches than anybody in this company last year and the year before that. I guess you got no respect for that, ‘Mr. Respect’. You got no respect for me, I know that. You have zero respect for me because I’ve never been one of these guys who came in here and kissed your ass and came to you looking for advice and played your little game. I’ve never played by your rules. Not now, not ever gonna start. So I guess if being a fake, plastic, suck-ass behind the scenes is what it takes to become a bonafide superstar in your eyes, you can have it. I’ll be over here. Have fun being the guy who plays ‘John Cena’ on TV.”
Dean Ambrose failed in his endeavor to supplant John Cena. He failed to supplant Brock Lesnar. He failed to supplant Roman Reigns. In his failure to supplant Vince McMahon’s chosen ones, he saw pro wrestling become that “nuclear wasteland” where sincerity, creativity, and equal opportunity were all a pipedream. Ambrose failed to lead a revolution within WWE so he chose to lead one from outside, declining to sign a new contract at the start of 2019.
Jon Moxley explains his decision on “Talk is Jericho” - 5/28/19:
“If there were no other promotions to work for in the world, I still would have left WWE. If there were no other wrestlers, I would have just started my own promotion, started my own training school and trained my own opponents. I would have re-seeded the wrestling business from scratch if I had to. But the timing of it is just so crazy.”
As if fated, his choice to leave WWE coincided with the announcement of All Elite Wrestling as a new company, backed by the money and networking of Tony Khan, under the stewardship of The Elite who had spent years cultivating an alternative wrestling scene outside the jurisdiction of the global empire.
Here was a blank slate, upon which to build something healthy and vibrant. Here was a chance to experiment and redefine American pro wrestling, to push it beyond the self-imposed limits of the past two decades. Here was a vision of opportunity for all, a vision of reward for those willing to be bold.
Fast-forward to now.
According to Claudio Castagnoli, “The vision got watered down.”
According to PAC, “AEW never became what it was supposed to be.”
According to Moxley, “In five years, nothing has been built.”
Are they right?
If Jon Moxley, Kenny Omega, Christian Cage, Samoa Joe, CM Punk, Adam Copeland, Mercedes Mone, Bryan Danielson, Chris Jericho, Adam Cole, Dustin Rhodes, The Hurt Syndicate, Kazuchika Okada, Billy Gunn, and Sting all got snapped out of existence three years ago, could AEW have filled up Wembley Stadium twice? Could AEW have gotten the most lucrative media rights deal outside WWE in pro wrestling history?
If Jon Moxley and Samoa Joe weren’t there to step in and steady the wheel in late 2022 and late 2023, respectively, would the AEW World Championship still have its illustrious prestige?
Even if the Death Riders are wrong in their diagnosis, they maintain a firm belief, and their objective and their methods are clear. By entrenching Jon Moxley as an oppressive, smothering, immovable force sitting atop AEW’s mountain, they’ve created a target. By becoming what he could not supplant, what he could not topple in WWE, Moxley has created an enemy. By hiding away the AEW World Championship – and perhaps so that it cannot bear witness to these grotesque actions – Moxley has removed all distractions for himself and his opponents to focus on the task at hand.
That task: replace him.
Replace Moxley and everyone else like him. Kill the idea of the reliable old star who’s made a name for himself outside AEW and would be perfectly fine without AEW. Kill the idea that only these stars know how to truly succeed in pro wrestling. Kill the idea that pro wrestling is a narrow thing, with one acceptable style and a strictly defined technique.
Jon Moxley has become what he hates and he wants to be destroyed.
“I will put them through what I went through and worse. That might not be pretty, that might be ugly, that might be uncomfortable but that's the only way I know how to do it. That's the only way our generation knows how to do it.”
Who will vanquish him and chart a new path? Who will prove that this is not the only way? Who will lead the revolution?
Jon Moxley speaking to the NY Post – 11/11/24
“My goals going forward are probably the most ambitious things I’ve ever attempted. 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.”
One week before Dynasty and his shot to reclaim the AEW World Championship, Swerve Strickland teamed with Willow Nightingale to face Jon Moxley and Marina Shafir in an intergender tornado tag match. It’s the first of its kind in AEW, which up to now had dabbled in intergender tag matches on a few previous occasions, but with strict rules requiring that should a man tag in, the man on the other team enters the match also, with the same rule applied to the women.
Outside the indies, intergender physicality had long been verboten in major American pro wrestling. The rare intergender match is typically goofy, played mostly for laughs, with zero impactful action. There have been plenty of “accidents” and “distractions” which allowed men to hit a move on the opposite gender in the ring, a few Royal Rumble spots for the opposite sex, but the serious in-ring story beats that can only occur through a match are sequestered by gender.
Here and now, this was something fresh, something exciting, something to push the envelope–effectively, what AEW should be.
Willow and Marina did not hesitate to inflict punishment on their male counterparts. Swerve and Mox, however, danced around outright attacking the women, limiting their offense to what was only necessary in order to move the match along. That is, until Willow pounced Mox into a table, allowing her to finish off Marina Shafir and win the match for her team. After the bell rang, as Swerve and Willow celebrated their victory, Jon Moxley slithered back into the ring and gave his female foe a Paradigm Shift DDT.
It was a heinous and deplorable act, nothing new for the world champion. But in who it was done to, it charted new ground. That it was done specifically to the beloved, ever joyful Willow Nightingale… well… this sonofabitch had to pay. The live audience was outraged and Swerve was rightly furious. He vowed to exact revenge on Jon Moxley before the end of the night.
In the closing moments of the show, we see Swerve Strickland on a warpath, hunting the champion. That hunt gets interrupted, however, when Swerve’s archrival and blood-enemy Hangman Page storms up to him. In recent weeks there had been flare-ups rekindling their epic, hate-fueled rivalry of the past two years, but this was the full on explosion that had been building.
As security separates the two men, Hangman reiterates his vow never to let Swerve win the AEW World Championship again.
Swerve: You need to let it go! You need to move on with your life!
Hangman: Let it go??? You broke into my house!
Swerve: You burned my house down!
Hangman: You deserved it!
Swerve: I know!
Hangman is stunned at this admission of responsibility.
Hangman: What did you just say to me?
Swerve: I said I know.
Water is poured on the fire… for now. Confused by a response he never could have expected, Hangman strides away.
Swerve resumes his hunt for Jon Moxley, but this distraction allows the Death Riders to get the jump on him. Like so many challengers before him, Swerve let his mind become clouded and dropped his guard, a fatal mistake when dealing with Jon Moxley and his crew. They beat Swerve senseless backstage, then drag him to the ring. In the ring, they pour broken glass on the mat and powerbomb his bare back down onto the shards.
Swerve appears fully incapacitated, another would-be usurper dispatched with ease. Moxley gets in his face and taunts him before the Death Riders climb out of the ring, leaving him for dead.
But as this gang leaves through the crowd, Swerve rises from the bed of glass, his eyes fixed upon the AEW World Champion. Moxley turns back and watches as Swerve Strickland rises to his feet, somehow unbroken. The arena chants “SWERVE’S HOUSE” as the challenger stares down AEW’s indomitable king. For the first time in a long time, in the eyes of that king is genuine concern about the challenger he must face.
Jon Moxley speaks with The Knockturnal - 4/4/25
Knockturnal: "Your goal with the Death Riders—clearing the deck of a lot of older wrestlers and encouraging younger talent to step up. After Revolution, we saw Nick Wayne step up and kind of challenge Christian Cage. Any others you’re looking to step up or are keeping an eye on?"
Moxley: “A lot of them. There’s always the obvious names that are out there, names that people think about as far as guys that have a lot of success to come. But I often wonder about the young shepherd boy no one’s paying attention to—the guy who’ll pull the sword from the stone. It might be somebody in this room while we’re looking at this guy or girl, and nobody is paying attention to that person. That’s the kinda stuff I look out for. If I’m in a room, my eyes aren’t where everyone else’s are. I don’t know the answers yet, but it’s something I’m constantly on the watch for. Obviously what happens on the screen is a big part of everything. The fans are a huge part of everything. At the end of they day they decide everything, one way or the other. If they love you, if you’re their guy, then you're their guy. People try to fight against that. If you’re embraced by the people… that’s the most important thing.”
Knockturnal: “What are you usually looking at?”
Moxley: “It’s hard to put into words. People… imagine that they wanna be in this position, whatever you want to call it: star, top guy, whatever. To really be that–you can be given that, you can be handed that to a degree. But the only way to really get there is to grow into it. You can be handed anything, but that is all just fairy dust. Most of the work happens unseen. A lot think that the flashy parts of it, like “Oh my championship belt and I’m gonna hold it over my head and put on my sunglasses and walk down the aisle looking all cool and shit’, well yeah that’s part of it. But they get there, think they’re there, realize something’s missing and they don’t know why there's a funny feeling in their stomach like something’s missing. They think, ‘This isn’t what I thought it would be.’ They don’t realize they haven’t done any of the actual work yet. The work is just beginning. That’s why a lot of people crumble.
“But I see some guys and I can tell… They get it.
“They’re doing the things that will lay the foundation. The way they operate and carry themselves and the way they look at things, they’re laying the foundation and when they get there, it’s gonna stick. A lot of guys try to paint the house without laying the foundation yet… One of the best and most underappreciated attributes you can have doing this is patience. Patience and endurance. Not just physical endurance… Endurance to stay the course and not get thrown off. Realize that every single night is dripping water that hollows out the stone. Every day is a chance to experience, learn something, and make one new fan that day, and that might be a lifelong fan that follows you forever… It keeps adding up. Overnight success… usually that person’s not ready for it. Patience. And it doesn’t turn out in your mind exactly how it’s going to go. Don’t rush to be the perfect version of yourself. Every single day you should get better.
“God willing, In 10 years I’m significantly better than I am now. That version of me will hopefully whoop the shit out of today’s version of me. That’s the goal: compete with yourself… That’s the defining characteristic of me and the people around me. We’re professionals and we take this shit seriously.”
Knockturnal: "Speaking of competition—Swerve Strickland at Dynasty. What are you anticipating?"
Moxley: “It’s not about me or what I want. If you find yourself in the ring with me, especially if you find yourself in the ring with me and the world championship is on the line, then I would suggest you don’t put any focus on me and what I’m doing. Worry about yourself. We’re gonna find the real answers to some hard questions. It’s not gonna be about me or what I do or my teammates and what they do, this, that and the other, or any distractions that you can cloud your mind with. It’s about you and how far you’re willing to go.
What is in you that the world hasn’t seen yet? If you can take me out, then great. Do it. Shoot your shot… I’m giving you the chance.”
At AEW Dynasty in Philadelphia, Swerve Strickland will challenge Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship. But really, that title belt is not what is at stake. It’s never been about winning the championship; from the start, the objective has been for someone to emerge and usurp the establishment from power, to dispatch “the old way”.
Why do you need to see the world championship?... I am the AEW World Championship. It's not something you win, it's not something you hold, it's not something you show off and pose for pictures with. It lives in here. It's got to be cultivated and grown.
Moxley has hidden the belt away because those pounds of gold and leather are the ultimate representation of everything AEW can and should be, not the odious, foul creature he’s become, a type of creature that’s reigned over pro wrestling for decades.
Whether via intentional genius or as an accidental blessing, Jon Moxley has given everyone – from the fans to the wrestlers – a target. Moxley has shown what AEW should not be. While being this focal point, this foreground nude in stark white, around the champion has blossomed a vibrant collage of color, a vision of what AEW and pro wrestling at large could be. From “Timeless” Toni Storm constantly breaking new ground for what women can do in wrestling, to Hangman Page plumbing the depths of a tormented soul, to disaffected veterans like Ricochet and Mercedes Mone redefining their legacies, to raw talents like Harley Cameron and Kyle Fletcher beginning their ascent to stardom, the scene around Jon Moxley is thriving.
But all that is merely the dream of the revolution, not the revolution itself. That only comes when a group of radicals prove the old guard is no longer needed. That only comes when the head is lobbed off the king and placed on a pike to ward off anyone with notions of setting things back to the way they were.
Is Swerve Strickland the man to swing that axe? Much more than anyone in AEW who’s tried before him, he seems to be the chosen one. The fans are behind him, certainly. But does he have the clarity of mind and the singular focus needed to accomplish the task? Is he prepared for everything the king will do to cling to power?
Or is there an as-of-yet unknown shepherd boy still to pull the sword from the stone?
Perhaps soon we will find out and a new, innovative, bountiful, lasting era will be ushered into the landscape of All Elite Wrestling.