Jon Moxley, the reigning AEW World Champion, says that a "hard reset" is coming for the promotion and that "everything that has happened up until this point doesn't matter."
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In a recent interview with The New York Post's Joseph Staszewski, Moxley described the current state of AEW as "Day Zero" and that the rapid expansion of the company basically allowed him, as one of its most prominent figures, to push it in a new and more evenhanded direction.
Moxley said, "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."
Interestingly, the champion appears to be discussing this "reset" as both a narrative change for the company's storylines and for its actual business practices.
"As you add more weight, you need to build the infrastructure to support it, or it's going to break down," Moxley said. He pointed out that AEW's rapid success may have come so quickly that the company "broke through the dirt" faster than it was able to properly manage.
Since it launched in 2019, AEW expanded from just two hours of live television and four pay-per-views with Warner Bros. Discovery to five hours of programming and nine pay-per-views in 2024.
With a multiyear media rights extension with Warner Bros. Discovery on the horizon, AEW will soon have four hours of live TV—Dynamite and Collision, which will also be simulcast on Max—while its pay-per-views transition to the streaming platform. According to Variety, the deal is worth $185 million per year when factoring in all elements.
Moxley continued, saying "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...Like, this can all go away tomorrow."
According to the former WWE Champion, he has "a dream, a vision, something I can see. 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."
It's a remarkably utopian view for a wrestler whose public image has largely been that of a brutal, unhinged brawler. He first gained fame in WWE as Dean Ambrose, a founding member of the iconic faction The Shield alongside Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins. Moxley won multiple championships, including the WWE World Title, before leaving WWE in 2019.
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He joined the newly-launched AEW, where he continued his independent, gritty persona and became a top star. Moxley is a multiple-time AEW World Champion, a key member of the Blackpool Combat Club, and known for his willingness to engage in brutal, hardcore matches.
More than ever, it appears that Moxley is positioning himself as a key creative element of AEW both in front and behind the camera. If he's correct about a "hard reset," the promotion could be seeing big changes soon.
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