8 Wrestlers That Visibly Hated Working For AEW

2. Jon Moxley

‘Hated’ is a strong word, but that’s SEO, baby.

‘Hated’ almost certainly does not apply to Jon Moxley. It’s almost an insult to the man and his commitment to his craft. This is a man who has fallen on spiked bats, taken head-first bumps on exposed wooden boards, and overcome addiction and delayed time off to work to an extraordinarily committed standard. He truly cares about AEW - but passion is a word of several definitions.

He cares about the ideals and the opportunity AEW holds and represents - and at times, he expresses himself like those ideals have not met his exacting standards.

This was apparent before he reflected this attitude in his guise as the leader of the Death Riders. You can tell when he doesn’t believe in a storyline or angle. On each of the occasions he feuded with MJF, he either explicitly verbally buried the material - “This is terrible television” - or was so baffled and or uninterested that he forgot the night of the PPV when cutting what was meant to be the serious big sell go-home promo.

And what the hell was IWGP Heavyweight Champion Jon Moxley about? That run was so drab. He entered a three-star match era against a random and uninspiring series of opponents.

The Death Riders reenergised him - eventually - but think about the premise of the stable, which was his idea. Mox conceived of it because he knew AEW was not reaching its potential, and thought it might prove a useful method of getting the fans to root for its babyfaces.

He must have disliked, even hated, what it had become at some point or another.