Jon Moxley continues his media tour, as he follows up his highly-viewed interviews on Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast and Pro Wrestling Torch editor Wade Keller’s Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast, with an interview with the folks from 25 Years Later. Featured below are some of the highlights.
On his memories of working with late WWE Hall Of Famer “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes in WWE’s old developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW): “I was privileged enough to be able to work for Vince McMahon and also work with Dusty Rhodes, who was the head of creative at FCW when I was there. I had a very great and fulfilling time there. I would sit in the office with Dusty in the afternoons and just shoot the shit, in between training sessions. We would talk creative and ideas and he was still able at that point in his life to get excited about an idea just the same way he did at his apex in the late ’80s. I was privileged enough to work for arguably the two biggest creative driving forces in our industry.”
On never getting to headline WrestleMania, but having the honor of being the main event of Rhodes’ creation — Starrcade — in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio: “I’ll never get to main event WrestleMania but I got to main event Starrcade in my hometown of Cincinnati and that’s right up there, the top for me. Even though it was WWE’s version, still, it was my hometown and Dusty created Starrcade. I didn’t look at Dusty as a mentor. There are no peers to Dusty Rhodes but he treated me like one. He had this vision of me, of how I was going to take over WWE. These vignettes would be in a smokey bar, the camera zooms in on my back, Dean Ambrose leather jacket, in the Viper Club. He called it the Viper Club but he meant the Viper Room. He had this vision of me as a Johnny Depp, River Phoenix, “you’re James Dean baby”. He literally saw me as the coolest person in the world; that’s how he pictured these vignettes and pitched them to me. Dusty saw me as the coolest person in the world and Vince saw me as an idiot. That’s the difference between the two.”
On his first promo since leaving WWE : “Flash forward to my first promo I released after leaving WWE, the prison one and I knew we were filming in LA. I kept thinking about the leather jacket and the Viper Club and I insisted on getting a shot at the Viper Room, just for me. There was deep, deep meaning to that. What I didn’t know is that the dice on the wall were on a two and five, double or nothing but the conspiracy theorists out there noticed it. The other conspiracy theory I heard was that the dog represented Roman Reigns, the hound of justice. The dog was just a good boy doing his job, but hey, art is subjective and it can mean whatever you want it to.”
Check out the complete Jon Moxley interview at 25YearsLaterSite.com.
