Jon Moxley Reveals Chris Jericho Called Him First to Come Work for AEW, Jericho Didn’t Like Getting Handed a Script and Being Told What to Say

– Nerd News Today released a clip of the All Elite Wrestling (AEW) panel last weekend at the New York Comic-Con. During the panel, Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley talked about why they left WWE and wanted to join AEW. Jungle Boy also commented on why AEW is a good fit for him. Below are some highlights and a clip of the panel featuring Jon Moxley, Chris Jericho, and Jungle Boy at the convention.

Jon Moxley on why he signed with AEW: “To answer your questions, for me, it was all just crazy timing. I had been planning on leaving where I was before for a few months, and I actually had been talking to – I think the first guy besides my wife that even knew because I didn’t tell anybody — the only other guy that knew was Chris [Jericho]. It was on the phone. This was before any of this other stuff started happening and I said, ‘Dude, I’m out of here. I’m done.’ And he’s like, ‘Dude, you need to come work with us.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ Not five minutes later probably, I get call from Cody Rhodes, and he started explaining to me all this top secret stuff they had. And I’m like, ‘Whoa.’ And here we are.”

Jungle Boy on joining AEW: “I weigh about 150 pounds, and every week, I get to ride a dinosaur to the ring. And those are two things that, until pretty recently, would not have been acceptable anywhere else. I think AEW is really good at instead of looking at those as disadvantages, it’s what makes us special. It’s what makes us different and entertaining, and really the only voice we care about is you guys [the fans].”

Chris Jericho on why he left WWE: “I don’t really give a s*** what you guys think. I think that this is something that is very interesting to me is the fact that there are so many people coming out and saying we weren’t watching wrestling anymore. We kind of drifted away from it, and now we’re back watching AEW. I think a lot of our fanbase is kind of the lapsed fan who disappeared over the years because they were bored, or they weren’t feeling what was being done with anybody else. But now, as we mentioned with no scripts and all that, it gives us the chance to be the artists that we are and use the instincts that we’ve honed after doing this for years, and years, and years, and years to know how to put on a show, to know how to put on a match. Most importantly, how do you get your character across? There’s nobody in the world that knows how to play Chris Jericho better than I do, so don’t give me a f***ing script and say, ‘This is what Jericho’s going to say.'”

“And on top of that, to know that the very first show was such a huge success after all the waves that we’ve created in this industry and around the world without ever having one minute of national television time to our name, there was a lot of speculation. ‘Oh, what’s it going to be? Who’s going to watch? Bloo bloo blee blah bloo *Blows rasberry*.’ Most importantly, we saw who’s going to watch. The demos are huge, the numbers were huge, and now we are a viable, major league wrestling company that only has upwards to go.”

If using the above quotes, please credit Nerd News Today, with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.