Jon Moxley Proud To Have Represented AEW As World Champion During COVID-19 Pandemic
“'Oh, we don't have fans.' Big deal. It was actually kind of fitting for me.”
When Jon Moxley defeated Chris Jericho for the AEW World Championship at Revolution 2020 it was the start of a new chapter for the company. But unfortunately for Moxley, less than a month later the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything, with Mox leading AEW through an era of empty arenas.
However, despite the majority of his title reign occurring in front of no fans, Moxley is proud of his role, saying to Chris Jericho on the Talk is Jericho podcast:
"It sucked but I just ate it. There is so much actual bad things going on in the world that I'm not going to feel sorry for myself for one second. 'Oh, we don't have fans.' Big deal. It was actually kind of fitting for me. I felt like I was the perfect guy to carry the torch and take on that responsibility for that period of time. In WWE, I always felt like I was the unheralded workhorse and kept the lights on. I was always the guy called to do the hard, crappy jobs, stay and do the dark match, run to the airport in your gear to get on a plane and do the next match. I feel I never maybe got the credit for working as hard as I did. I didn't care, I clocked in, put my hard hat on and went to work. If you're paying me, I'm going to do what you need me to do.
“AEW, winning the championship, everything is going good and the stories we can tell and boom, the world shuts down. Who is going to be shouldering this responsibility? Of course, it's me. I took it on. I just owned it. I'm the pandemic champion. Nobody will remember this time period, nobody will look back on it fondly because the world sucks so bad and everyone's lives were miserable. Everyone wants to forget 2020. Nobody wants to look back on the glory days of my run on top. I'm proud that I was able to do that. We're in a war with NXT, I won't get into that, and we kept ratings going. I feel I did a really good job and I'm proud of what I did during a very dark period.”
Moxley held the title for 277 days before dropping it to Kenny Omega on December 2 Winter is Coming edition of AEW: Dynamite.
H/T: Fightful
