McGuire’s Mondays: Will Jon Moxley and AEW stick the landing?

By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer

In August 2020, Retribution made its debut on WWE television. The world was about five months into a pandemic and if you were a wrestling fan, you needed a shakeup. The empty-arena shows from WWE and AEW had lost their novelty and it was about the time a whole lot of us became stir-crazy. To see a bunch of masked people pop up at the end of a television show and take chainsaws to ring ropes was fresh, welcome, and intriguing enough to somehow get us excited for what might happen next.

The problem was that what happened next for Retribution was that they became … well … Retribution. Almost instantly, the group lost its mystique. Mustafa Ali breathed some life into it when he was revealed to be their leader, but even that didn’t last long. By the time March rolled around, about eight months after their debut, the faction was no more. What began as a pro wrestling angle with promise ended with little more than Shane Haste forever being saddled with the nickname Slapjack.

This happens a lot in pro wrestling. It seems like the masterminds behind these companies have really good ideas when it comes to starting something. As for developing it or, even – gasp! – somehow ending it, well that’s a different story. The fact that The Bloodline has managed to stay this relevant for this long feels improbable – and yet you still can’t convince me that the way it eventually ends will be entirely satisfying. Even the NWO, complete with the Hulk Hogan turn, wasn’t immune to a sloppy conclusion. The Angle That Changed Pro Wrestling (in the ’90s, at least) ended up fizzling as the group expanded, became less interesting and more than wore out its welcome.

All of this leads me to Jon Moxley. What’s going on with that guy? For weeks, he’s been talking in riddles, flanked by Marina Shafir, Evil Claudio, Pac (weirdly), and now Wheeler Yuta, if the end of Saturday’s WrestleDream is any indication of where that young fella is heading in the near future. He’s reintroduced the dastardly plastic bag trick into the pro wrestling vernacular. And now, he’s AEW World Champion again. This time, though, instead of posing with the title, he made Evil Claudio stow it away in a black bag after making Bryan Danielson pass out over the weekend. That final bit was a nice touch, and it underlined how meticulous everyone is being in rolling out this new version of Moxley. My only problem?

What exactly is this new version of Jon Moxley and will this new version of Jon Moxley stick the landing?

It’s hard to trust that the answer to the second question will be “yes.” And while it might be easy to say that’s an AEW thing, it’s actually a pro wrestling thing all around. Think of when we heard Paul Levesque wax poetic on Cody’s story over the past couple WrestleManias. He constantly leaned on the notion that Cody was never finishing his story because stories in pro wrestling aren’t ever finished – they just accumulate chapters. And, all told, he was right. The audience at large knew that the payoff would be Cody winning the biggest title WWE has to offer, but rarely did anyone consider that Cody’s story wouldn’t be finished after doing so. The tagline became catchy so everyone ran with it, but what did everyone think he’d do after winning that belt? Retire, take it home to Brandi, open a branch of DDP Yoga, and never wrestle again?

And so it goes. Cody’s story continues on with varying degrees of storytelling success. His was – and is (so far) – a feel-good tale, so it’s easier to ebb and flow with the machinations of WWE’s most vaunted hero. Moxley, though? Heel, cult-like stories are so much harder to navigate in the pro wrestling medium. We didn’t know what in the absolute hell Bray Wyatt was doing in the last bunch of years of his pro wrestling life, but we watched with attention … until we didn’t (or, at least, until that dumbass Hell In A Cell thing happened). There’s only so far an act can go when they travel in that specific lane. The initial incarnation of the Wyatt Family? Great stuff. But eventually, imaginations get out of control or the shine wears off and you’re just kind of stuck in a corner where you either come out one week and say, “Hey guys! Sorry about that! I’m a regular dude! Please like me still?” Or you simply fade away.

I can’t imagine Moxley ever doing either of those things. And maybe that’s why I’m skeptical of how this story with him and his band of badasses ends up. Let’s not forget that AEW can sometimes be worse than everyone else when it comes to storytelling holes. We just up and said goodbye to the Kris Statlander and Stokely Hathaway duo overnight, huh? Oh, and all that Devil stuff? Yeah, let’s just forget that ever happened. In so many ways, I could see Moxley rambling on AEW television for the rest of time without any of us really ever knowing why he’s doing what he’s doing or saying what he’s saying. The story begins and ends with, “Yeah, I’m kind of weird now and I love trying to suffocate people,” and off we go. It would be a shame if that’s what ends up happening, but it’s also not impossible that it’s actually what ends up happening.

Just as important here is the notion that the stakes couldn’t be much higher for AEW. Moxley just effectively retired the company’s most beloved figure, they are coming off the heels of their sparkly new television deal announcement, attendance is down, ratings are down, and the ability to thread the needle on something like this is exactly what AEW needs to give it the type of kickstart it has been in search of for quite some time. It feels like the company has had the germs of some really good storyline ideas in recent memory, but none of them have evolved into anything particularly must-see. I hope Moxley changes that.

As for now, we wait and see. It’s wild to think Retribution is already four years old and the only one left standing in WWE is Michin. In a lot of ways, that faction was the beginning of the end in that company for everyone else involved. Will Moxley’s Evil Blackpool Combat Club buck that cautionary tale and stick the landing?

Or, God forbid, will the ghost of Slapjack somehow find a way to rear its silly head?