Every AEW Title Reign Ranked From Worst To Best
4. Jon Moxley - World Title
Uneven but trending towards brilliance in recent months, Jon Moxley, like Nyla Rose, was unable to make the Georgia block, but had pre-taped an Empty Arena match with Jake Hager.
A bad one; it was attritional, dull, overlong and, in style and atmosphere, antithetical to what AEW stands for. And they still promoted it brilliantly. The failures in AEW - mostly - are very noble.
When Moxley returned, his Double Or Nothing defence was set: Mr. Brodie Lee. It was a curious choice, looking at the rankings, and the set-up was far more functional than AEW's usual big PPV match standard. But the match itself absolutely ruled - a visceral, super-violent head-dropper, they basically killed each other, and the guy who died first lost.
Mox spent yet more time on the shelf, but this only reinforced his babyface awesomeness. He wanted to be with his wife at her time of need, and f*cked everything else off. He's a genuinely rare, good dude, incredibly easy to root for, and his promo game has been incredible since he returned. The same witty badass at his core, he has brought a new level of emotion to put over the Brian Cage and Darby Allin matches. One had an incredible finishing sequence, and the other was just incredible: an emotive war that was far too cool to ever descend into melodrama.
The general bittersweet vibe of "This is really cool, shame there are no f*cking fans here" hasn't helped, obviously, but the numbers don't seem to care: Moxley's last two World Title matches pulled monster ratings.
Nobody, at least in good faith, has ever described the reigning AEW World Champion as "Super Mox". None of this feels oppressive.
It feels, as it should, like the hardest and coolest guy in the industry is its World Champion.