Jon Moxley Captures United States Championship On Awesome NJPW Debut
Jon Moxley > Dean Ambrose.
Jon Moxley has dethroned New Japan Pro Wrestling United States Champion Juice Moxley on his debut at the 2019 Best Of The Super Juniors Final.
That debut match, incidentally, was such good sh*t: wearing trunks in a bid to reinvent himself from sports entertainer to pro wrestler, Mox brutalised the deposed Champion in an unhinged, brutal brawl loaded with a sick strain of drama. Moxley pulverised Juice, smashed him through tables, and slurped hardway blood from his forehead in a disgusting/beautiful mission statement of a match. The Death Rider - what a badass name that is - also subverted the Japanese custom of bowing to generate the heat in an expressive, character-driven performance.
Robinson proved a superb babyface foil for the debuting star. His catatonic, jelly-legged selling put Moxley over as a real killer.
Moxley acquitted himself to Japan by introducing an AJPW-style super-finisher. Really, this was among the best and most purposeful near-falls in recent memory. He struck Robinson with the WWE version of Dirty Deeds, only for Juice to kick out. This protected Robinson's fighting spirit, and framed Moxley as something far more formidable than Dean Ambrose. It took a new, psycho, spiked DDT variation to get the job done.
Moxley drummed up the hype to a ludicrous degree following his WWE exit.
He delivered.