AEW And Jon Moxley’s Outer Heaven

Kept you waiting huh?

Since the retirement and assumed ‘murder’ of Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley has held the AEW World Championship hostage, secreted away in a briefcase that doesn’t look big enough to hold the 11 pounds of gold and leather and rhinestones. Unless it was smashed to bits and that case serves as its coffin.

The storyline of Mox’s record breaking 4th title reign started out with mystery and intrigue. He spoke in cryptic messages throughout his promos. Recruiting Marina Shafir to be his new muscle, and demoting the BBC into the cult of acolytes now known as the Death Riders. (Dibs on Jon Moxley and the Death Riders for a jazz band name)

Much of the intrigue kept building up as this cult kept attacking many people on the roster making enemies out of everyone. Drawing into the fray Orange Cassidy, Darby Allin, Jay White, Hangman Adam Page and now Adam ‘Cope’ Copeland. After Moxley destroyed Orange and defeated Jay White in a fatal four way match, many fans began to question the direction of the story.

This was around the time that rumors circulated that Shane McMahon was eager to work with AEW, and with Moxley cryptically speaking of “something that’s coming” we all thought he was taking the tough love route of trying to prepare the locker room for the arrival of a cancer to professional wrestling, a cancer that bears the last name McMahon.

Many were frustrated when Copeland came out to reveal his return and cement himself as Moxley’s next challenger. After all with the gravity of the story he was creating, there’s just no way he could drop the belt to Cope right? We all assume that he’s going to slip out by the skin of his teeth one more time before his real reckoning would be firmly en route.

For the length of this story, that reckoning has shown itself to potentially be Darby Allin, as Moxley is his mountain to climb, his metaphorical Mount Everest if you will. But Darbs kept failing, he lost his title shot with Danielson to Mox, he let Moxley goad him into a bout of pride, a fatal mistake. Then he tried to take on the entire system on his own while not even fully healed, again proving to be a mistake. Darby will have to conquer the mountain within himself if he is to ever have a hope of defeating Jon Moxley. Perhaps he’ll have to climb the real Mt. Everest and come to terms with the fact that he is good enough to get the job done, that he doesn’t need to throw caution to the wind and throw his own body so recklessly at his problems to solve them.

But what is it about this new version of Moxley that makes him so imposing? What is it about his words and cryptic musings that has us on the edge of our seat? Why won’t he show us the World Championship? What part does Wheeler Yuta have to play in all of this? And what is up with his hair? From the beginning of this programme there was something so familiar about this new and improved Moxley but I couldn’t quite put a Phantom Limb on it.

And make no mistake, Moxley is NEW and IMPROVED. He has taken to completely shaving his head bald, making him look more sharp and intimidating, growing his beard out to really sell the look. He’s also lost about ten pounds of fat and replaced it with 15 pounds of pure muscle. He looks like he’s in the greatest shape of his life. His words are more focused to a point, he doesn’t move around as much while giving his promos, quite simply, he’s locked the fuck in. I think we are witnessing Mox’s final form. He’s about as real as a pro wrestler can get, he effortlessly conveys that he is the baddest motherfucker to ever fuck mothers and if you don’t believe it I challenge you to say it to his face…no thank you!

Back to familiarity, there was something that resonated with me and instantly connected in his Close Up interview with wife Renee Paquette. He said his dream is a thousand Jon Moxleys, a whole roster molded in his image. And then it hit me, his whole spiel about wanting to burn AEW down is not about destroying it. Well maybe what he sees as his nemesis is the sports entertainment based ideology that had dominated the space for 30+ years.

If you see Jon Moxley as a very specific archetype, the story starts to make sense. Put simply, Jon Moxley is Big Boss. The legendary soldier and biological forebear of Solid Snake. Let me explain.

Big Boss was a soldier once, a dutiful and well disciplined one. His only concern was ever completing the mission at hand. He didn’t question authority from his superiors, he did what was asked of him, and even more so, when what was asked was too much.

Big Boss would eventually learn some very uncomfortable truths about the world and his place in it. He would start to see the hypocrisy of his superiors. And with every life he had to take to advance America’s agenda of securing ultimate power, including taking out his mentor and mother figure The Boss, he became disillusioned. Each new fight chipped away at his soul, realizing that all the nations of the world saw him and his kind as disposable tools to be used and discarded in the quest for the ultimate weapon.

Sound Familiar? Moxley starting out in WWE (minus his Indy days) Did everything that was asked of him, it led him to success even though it was a far cry from the wrestler he came in as. He was forced to turn on his best friend Seth Rollins the night Roman ‘retired’ due to Leukemia. He didn’t get to have the crazy kind of match he wanted with Brock Lesnar. All these things chipped away at his soul. He became disenfranchised with that company and left.

For a very short time he floated in the wind, making appearances at Indy shows and in New Japan before finally arriving in AEW. But he showed up in his BDU’s, he was there to start a war.

Much like Big Boss who kept moving around from country to country looking for a new home to wage his war on the world, Mox thought he had found a new home. But the same problems peeked their ugly little heads up again. Big dollar, big ego guys thinking they should have the top spot just given to them instead of earning it. In the ring, in the fight, there’s no limit to what Mox will subject himself to, even humiliation. He saw the same patterns emerging in his new home. So what was he to do? Tired of running from it, he decided to seize it all, he would destroy everything AEW had become and would build a new home on top of its ashes.

Moxley’s Outer Heaven

Moxley’s dream of an Outer Heaven is a place where wrestlers will be taken seriously. Where wrestlers will always be needed. Where they won’t be tools of the promoter or billionaires in their petty squabbles for their own enrichment. No, the best of the best would thrive, everyone who respects the craft and sport of kings would have a place to eat at the table.

This is Moxley’s quest, his mission, his raison d'être. Its clear in his M.O. (X?) How he has taken to attacking what he sees as weakness in the AEW roster. Annihilating the comedy acts of groups like the Dark Order, and driving a wedge between the members of Top Flight. We’ve already seen the poison of his influence affect these groups, Evil Uno grows increasingly frustrated by Alex Reynolds and John Silver’s inability to focus and be serious. Makes sense in what should have been a star-making moment, Evil Uno got absolutely destroyed by Moxley during his third title reign and left buckets of his blood on the canvas.

Action Andretti and Lio Rush are tired of losing, they split from Top Flight and now seek to reinvent the tag team division with their incredible acrobatic agility and cheating if need be. The fingerprints of Moxley are all over them.

This is the kind of charismatic influence that Big Boss became legendary for. While not an alpha showman, he has a way of winning people over to his cause with his unwavering commitment and stoic determination. Moxley has never had a repeatable catch phrase, he speaks from the heart with fire and passion when required to do so. It's not hard to see how his uncompromising pursuit of this Outer Heaven has won over the people already closest to him in Claudio, Marina, and surprisingly the Bastard Pac.

Do I even need to point out the obvious comparisons with the eye patch and Excalibur calling him Big Boss in his Revolution match with Jericho? -Fitting as that was his first world title capture on Revolution.

With the Big Boss archetype it's not hard to see (ah I …what I did there) that Moxley’s vision is a world where the Pro Wrestler matters more than the letters on his jacket. He doesn’t want to be ruled by AEW, New Japan, or WWE any more than Big Boss wants to be subjected to the command of the U.S. Russia or China.

But if that’s the story, where does it go from here? At the time of writing it is February 19th. AEW Revolution is on March 9th (barring some WW3-esque disaster) This is fitting during the extreme state of politics, we just had a shit show of an election and the world is going to hell. Many, even fellow Sicko Club Thee Brett Michelle has compared Mox and his cult to that of Mango Mussolini. (Make AEW Great Again?) The apt-timed PPV might be preparing us for more than the very real life possible Revolution but one we may not see coming within the storyline.

In the Metal Gear series, Big Boss goes rogue on multiple occasions and tries to establish his nation of mercenaries, to keep the balance of power in check. (Important to note I suppose that he believes he is in the right, the story is vastly too complex for simple ‘good guys and bad guys’) Each time, the governments of the world try to send forces or talented soldiers to eliminate Big Boss. And each time they fail. So what do they do? They send his own son after him, Solid Snake, a greener than goose shit rookie who by all means should not have succeeded but somehow managed to take down his father’s ambitions both times. (we are ignoring the finer details of large swaths of lore here for the sake of argument and comparison).

So maybe, Darby isn’t the chosen one after all…Or maybe he is! This is no exercise in fantasy booking, it's not about who will dethrone Moxley, but who will cause his downfall. 

The call is coming from inside the house

When this whole thing started, it began with a betrayal. Moxley and the BCC turned on Bryan Danielson. Claudio uppercut Bryan, sending him to the mat; he stared up stunned. Moxley then grabbed a plastic bag and proceeded to suffocate his long time best friend and stablemate. The BCC seemed to be in on it, including their new co-trios champ Pac. But one person wasn’t…Wheeler Yuta. He was just as shocked as Bryan and it was Pac who had to hold him at bay while he cried and watched his mentor/father figure be decimated.

Wheeler Yuta has long been described as the ‘whipping boy’ of the BCC and now the Death Riders. On numerous occasions they leave him for dead and punish him for his shortcomings, something they have never held each other to on the same standard, Mox, Bryan and Claudio never slapped or bullied each other for losing matches. They never used each other as bait like they did with Yuta against Orange Cassidy.

Wheeler is not the son of Mox (Snake isn’t really the son of Big Boss either but a clone) It is clear he threw in his lot with the Death Riders because he had no choice. If he didn’t rededicate himself to the cult of Mox, they would hunt him down and make him pay for it. So he turned on his mentor at the conclusion of his final match as a full time wrestler, using his own signature move no less.

Wheeler might actually be somewhat of a trojan horse, all the abuse he’s suffered, a man can only take so much. And when it's all about to crescendo, who better than Wheeler to be the one to stab Mox in the back and cause his downfall from the top of the AEW mountain?

Well if the possibility exists, there may be one other person. Someone who Moxley actually calls his “son”. Someone who has had a rough string of losses in his home, someone who has become disenfranchised with his position but still managed to best Claudio Castagnoli at Wrestle Dynasty. Someone who recently lost to the Great O’Kahn so badly that he didn’t even fight the attempt to shave his head, he took the clippers and did it himself. Someone who hasn’t been seen in weeks.

Shota Umino has long been associated with Jon Moxley. Moxley calls him his son because he took him under his wing to try and mold him into a powerhouse wrestler in his own image. Even calling him “Shooter” as Mox probably struggled with the Japanese pronunciation.

New Japan has been trying to make Shota into their next big star for the last couple years, but something has been missing, he just hasn’t been connecting with the audience and they flat out seemed to reject him. It's the John Cena effect, you try to shove what you want to be popular down people’s throats and they will reject it outright. Shota’s latest loss seems to have finally been a breaking point for his sad apathetic character arc.

There exists in the AEW/NJPW partnership, the slight possibility that they bring Shota in to join the Death Riders and revamp his entire gimmick. As Mox’s true son, there also exists the possibility of him being the one to bring the whole thing down. Especially if Mox does not lose to Copeland and we continue this story for another PPV cycle. 

When Mox won the IWGP title, he was very dismissive of Shota, who was by his side to support him. He pushed him aside for matches with others, he did eventually give Shota a match, and while he really showed out, he still was not up to the task of taking down his “father”.

What better of a redemption arc than for Shota to show that he’s finally able to defeat Moxley? That’s been a running theme after all in the Snake VS Big Boss stories, at the start Snake is green and unsure of himself, he fails over and over to complete his mission but he doesn't give up, he learns from his mistakes until he bests the old man.

This is just one of many possibilities though, the similarities of the stories got me thinking way too deeply about it and I felt compelled to do a deep dive. With pro wrestling, there’s always conflicts with schedules and plans change constantly, injuries occur and stories have to adapt on the fly. In all likelihood this story will shake out completely differently on the night of Revolution. 

But don’t be surprised if Moxley’s mission for an Outer Heaven continues and it's one of his 2 sons that ends up taking him down. Does that mean Wheeler Yuta is Liquid Snake in this story? And Shota is Solid? That must mean Claudio is Grey Fox-Big Boss’s most loyal lieutenant. Marina is Eva, the keeper of Big Boss’s will, and the devious always scheming in the background Pac must be Revolver Ocelot. Does that make Bryan Danielson Major Zero who started this whole thing with Moxley based on a shared vision of how they could shape the future of Pro Wrestling with a stable of killers, only to be betrayed by Moxley’s desire for his own selfish dream? And if Yuta is the one to take down Moxley, will it be at the manipulations of Bryan Danielson? He may not be that Machiavellian for that type of revenge plot, but hell, anything is possible. Also…what’s up with his hair?!

These are not perfect 1:1 comparisons, but few things are; when great stories are retold, the best thing the authors and artists can do is change them to something completely different. In my research I have learned that Mox used at least 2 verbatim fascist quotes from Hitler and Mussolini. Please understand that comparison is also not lost on me, Big Boss is not a hero, he’s a misguided martyr. He thinks he is morally right and uses fascistic principles to maintain his grip on his dream of a world that is constantly at war and always in need of him and his soldiers. I do not believe Moxley made these quotes by accident and I do not believe he is a Hitler loving fascist. I believe he is playing a character who has been misguided down the wrong path of those megalomaniacs. It's a reflection of what is happening in our own world right now, fascism is on the rise again, and the world seems evermore ok with it. For those of us who oppose it, things seem grim and often hopeless.

Moxley is going to keep winning and making AEW feel hopeless and oppressed until the right person emerges to stand up to him. Which is probably why it will be Darby Allin because he is small, he is seen as weak, and half dead. But his heart still beats. He’s not afraid, not afraid to fail, not afraid to give it his all, even if it's certain he’ll lose and maybe even die. That’s why despite how hard they try, the Death Riders will never be able to kill him. Darby Allin, much like us, can only truly lose the fight, if he gives up.

“Hope is the last thing to die in man”

Viva La Revolución