Several fans criticized Jon Moxley for being suplexed onto a spiked bat during last week’s episode of AEW Dynamite. However, not everyone seems to be against the brutal, bloody spot.
During a recent edition of the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, Nic Nemeth praised Moxley for his willingness to explore new boundaries for AEW and entertain its fans.
Nemeth said, “He’s one of those guys that would do anything [for AEW]. He’s always gone a little bit more hardcore in the last couple of years than the WWE years, obviously, because it’s a different product. When you see something like this, where every couple of weeks or months he’s doing something a little bit crazier … please focus on the part where he goes, ‘I want to make people happy, I want people to say that they had the greatest time of their life at this show,’ and then you see something extra disgusting like this, [it] is a huge positive, I think. One, it is a totally different product than you’re used to. Please understand that. The reason the AEW exists is because people were tired of a crappy WWE product at the time. You got a total alternative.”
He continued, “[The spot] It’s been used a few times by Cope, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, okay, it looks the part,’ looks like there’s six-inch nails coming out of a wood bat, whatever it is. Something like this makes people like me go, ‘Well, are those sharp nails?’ It gives a little street cred to a weapon like that because you’ve seen it swung, you’ve heard it hit — you know it hurts, you know it’s crazy that it’s happening — but when something like this goes above and beyond and digs into the body, you’re now letting everybody know, ‘This is something really big.’ The next time you see Cope hold it up in the air, they’re going to be like, ‘Ooh, there’s that thing that almost ripped the organs around the sides of Moxley’s back,’ and it’s good for the business to give a little street cred to those weapons.”
The match featured numerous interference moments, including Wheeler Yuta, PAC, and Claudio Castagnoli helping Moxley regain the upper hand after Cope suplexed him onto a spike, which got stuck in his back.
