Jon Moxley Recalls First Script Given To Him By WWE
“I remember feeling this f****** feeling in my gut of ‘oh no, I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
When Jon Moxley turned up to AEW in 2019, he was proud to be ‘unscripted’ with the naturally charismatic Moxley no stranger to bad creative when wrestling as Dean Ambrose in WWE.
Moxley recently released his autobiography ‘Mox’, and during a promotional appearance on Wrestling Observer Radio, Moxley let loose on his thoughts of being scripted in wresling:
“To answer your question, literally from almost day one,” Moxley revealed when asked how long WWE handed him pre-written promos “They hand us this f****** promo. It’s the first promo The Shield ever did. They hand us this script and I’m like ‘okay. We’ll play with this. I’ve got these ideas of stuff I want to say and whatever.’ They were like ‘no. This is what you’re saying.’ I’m like ‘yeah, but we’re thinking about this and whatever.’ And then it got awkward, and people started looking at each other, writers and [Paul] Heyman. Heyman was there, because we were working with him at time. Hunter came in and it was like awkward and whatever. It was made very clear to us that ‘oh no. This is what you’re saying. You’re reading the script.’ And I remember feeling this f****** feeling in my gut of ‘oh no, I’ve made a terrible mistake. Oh my god.’
“My favourite part of wrestling is coming up with promos and just talking and saying the truth and relating it to the situation. It’s so much fun, it’s so artistically pleasing. I love that s***. I love doing promos. But now that’s taken away? Now I just read what’s on the script? Literally on day one. But I went along with it. Over the years, you can work with the writers and you can work with Vince and you get a little more leeway sometimes. I feel like I was really good, over the years, of being given a s***** script and making it good, reading it well and kind of changing it a little bit and whatever. I’d get a little leeway sometimes. The script was s***, but I’d make it pretty good. I actually got really, really f****** at being a WWE superstar, and taking ‘here’s your script. It’s eight minutes, maybe ten’ and making it perfect and nailing all the beats, getting all the hits in. I got really good at that s***. But that’s not what I wanted to do.”
H/T: Wrestling Inc.