During a recent interview with the 25 Years Later podcast, Jon Moxley (Dean Ambrose in WWE) commented on the reaction he received from his “Talk is Jericho” appearance, why people in WWE can’t speak out about how frustrated they are, whether Vince McMahon would take him back and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On the reaction to his Talk is Jericho interview: “The podcast seemingly got a bigger reaction than I thought it would. I didn’t know if the response would be positive or negative but I didn’t really care. I had things I needed to say and I tried to do it in the most objective way possible. I tried to emotionally detach from it, which is very difficult to do sometimes when you’re telling some of these stories. I’m happy people liked it. You never know if people are going to judge you or make up their own opinion but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to come off as ungrateful to the WWE, the universe, the Gods, or whatever God you choose to believe in that blessed me with all of these things that I have. My wife and I have a very nice home and I don’t have to be financially dependent on WWE anymore. I’m grateful that they gave me the opportunity to do that. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m a snotty, entitled kid or anything but some of these stories you wouldn’t believe — some of these stories about how WWE works are so unbelievable. Somebody has got to say this stuff and there are so many people in WWE that can’t. I can. It’s the giant elephant in the room that’s screaming “HELLO”. Everyone knows that everything we’re doing is stupid but we’re still doing it. Something has to happen there. I couldn’t help it from the inside. I tried but they all think I’m some kind of idiot, but I saved all my money so who’s the idiot now?”
On how his podcast differs from CM Punk’s podcast in 2014 and if he burnt his bridge with WWE: “A bridge is never burnt in WWE. Vince [McMahon] would have me back tomorrow and would love it if I came crawling back to him. I think Punk had a lot more personal animosity towards WWE and specific people. I don’t know every detail of his story and I haven’t spoken to him since he left WWE. His experience drove him to not like wrestling anymore, I think. For me, I wanted the exact opposite. I just got pro wrestling back after losing it years ago. I’m like “Whoa, I’m back in the game, here we go!” I wanted to make sure that people knew that there’s no bitterness and that my love of wrestling and my desire to perform for the fans, my desire to meet and exceed their expectations and my love for the fans has only gotten bigger. They have stayed with me through thick and thin and they’re going to follow me wherever I go. Now they’re AEW fans. They can still be WWE fans but they’re AEW fans too. Not trying to come off as arrogant but that’s a lot of fans that are now following AEW. We’re garnering a huge fan base and we’ve only done one show. It just so happens that the one show we’ve done was fucking awesome. Even if this whole thing goes fucking tits up and we never run another show, that was one helluva show. But we’re going to run more shows, a lot of shows. We’re running a show June 29th in Daytona Beach, Florida, me vs Joey Janela. That’s a beautiful, ugly mess [laughs].”
On WWE hiring so many indie talents for NXT: “I never thought of that until you just said it but its amazing. I thought it was a bad idea when Hunter started buying the indies. You had Seth and me, along with Joey Mercury and we were able to sneak in a few key guys like Luke Harper, Neville and Cesaro. Once I was on the main roster and NXT started, which I wasn’t a part of, every week Triple H was taking an Instagram selfie with some indie guy. I don’t know if he was trying to make himself look cool and get some indie cred or what, or make NXT cool. He basically started buying the indies. I remember thinking that it might not be a good idea. Then where are all of these good ideas going to come from? If they signed Daniel Bryan at 21, he never would’ve become Bryan Danielson and you never would’ve had WrestleMania 30. If they signed Punk before he really became CM Punk, he never would’ve done what he did. If they signed me at 21, I never would’ve become anything good. I had to develop first before getting brought in.
Buying up all of the indie scene was the same as Vince buying up all the territories back in the day. There’s nobody left to cherry pick for talent. It’s amazing that even though they bought up the indies that it has repopulated itself stronger than ever. Makes you very optimistic about the future of pro wrestling. That’s probably the biggest difference between my interview and the Punk interview. He was basically saying fuck pro wrestling, and I was saying that I got my love of pro wrestling back. I want to wrestle everyone. Let’s drop all the bridges, get all the companies together and have a super show that sells out a stadium right now. Fuck it. The sum of wrestling outside of WWE is bigger than WWE. I feel like myself, the entire AEW roster and all of the fans are the same team, reaching for the same goal, to make wrestling awesome. To not be embarrassed to tell people you’re a wrestling fan because they’d say to you “oh that show with fart jokes and they poop on each other or whatever the fuck happens over there anymore”. If you’re a wrestling fan and you show someone some things from WWE, you’d be embarrassed. You’d want to bust out old VHS tapes to show them why you’re a wrestling fan because this isn’t it. I want people to be wearing an AEW shirt and have someone say “Oh you’re a wrestling fan, fuck yeah, me too”. When I was standing on that poker chip at the end of Double Or Nothing, I didn’t know when we were going off the air. I stayed up there but for some reason, I just wanted to take a fucking victory lap. Security did not appreciate it but I took a giant victory lap around the arena, off the air and I felt like I was with 12,000 teammates. We are all AEW. We have that common bond.”
On why he hasn’t said much about Triple H: “My thing was between Vince and me. I had a good relationship with Hunter. There’s no heat. The only person I might have a bad relationship with is Vince and that’s not a bad relationship because of animosity. We just don’t speak the same language creatively. It’s better for both of us to not work together. With everyone else, it’s all good, ya know?”
