Promos are my favorite part of pro-wrestling. Well, aside from…y’know, the wrestling. They’re the conduit that sells why this match, why this character, and why this storyline is worth investing in.

In this series, I aim to dissect the promos of the past, present and future (whenever the future becomes present; I’m no time traveler….yet). I want people to see why this paramount part of the art is so important by shining a light on the promos that have gone on to be legendary or underrated.

In this inaugural iteration, the promo Jon Moxley cut the night he washed away the sins of Dean Ambrose and was baptized anew. This was when AEW became a revolution. 

Double or Nothing, 2019. It’s a night we all know well, a night we celebrate for a show that changed the industry. 

It’s the main event. Chris Jericho, a giant of the landscape, stands tall over Kenny Omega, a man who spent the decade changing the perception of the greater wrestling world. The fans are ravenous, they are living, they are jubilant. They have been well-fed.

But the meal wasn’t over. There was just one bite that would taste of ambrosia.

A figure marches down the stairs, unannounced, unwelcomed, unexpected. Yet he is a favorite of the crowd; the cheers rapturous, the adrenaline in Jim Ross’s voice energetic, the atmosphere cathartic.

After driving Jericho, the referee and Omega to the mat, Moxley would breathe and inhale the atmosphere. This was bigger than what was thought. 

This was when the paradigm shifted.

Later in the night after the closing shot of the Death Rider breathing heavily after another DDT to Kenny Omega, this time on the giant stack of poker chips, a video was uploaded to AEW’s YouTube channel. 

It was of Jon Moxley, pacing around backstage, reborn and brimming with so much passion, one befitting of his rage, violence, and heart that was waiting: waiting for years to spill out. The cup had truly runneth. 

As he charged into the room, ferocity brimming throughout every single fiber of his being, his rage was directed, pointed, and celebratory – wrestling has, to him, just been vindicated.

“One day, they will all come to my funeral just to make sure I stay dead, but today is not that day.” He paces around the room, unable to contain himself.

“I am alive,” he says, as though he were tasting this declaration upon his tongue, his arms outstretched. “My heart is still breathing and I am breathing fresh air for the first time in a long time.”

Removing his vest hastily and without care, he charges forth at the camera. “My name is Jon Moxley and I am on a mission to reclaim my soul. And I am not the only one who thought, who thinks, it’s about time this industry got a facelift. So make no mistake about it, this is an official declaration of war tonight.”

His chest heaves with unbridled passion, his breath labored, by humanity itself liberated, his eyes burning with the freedom he had not felt in some time.

“To anyone who wants to get in my way and anyone who stands in AEW’s way: we have a mission to knock the pillars of this industry on their ass! We ain’t reading the history books anymore baby, we writin’ them.”

It would seem impossible to be fed on just words, but Jon Moxley looks well fed, and for his last bite, he punctuates this announcement: “This is what you call a paradigm shift.”

Good lord almighty, I still get goosebumps. I love going back to this promo, this moment because this is a reminder that wrestling history had been altered forever, and I was branching out enough as a fan to see that this was the moment. This was a sign of the inevitability of a company that was to surpass expectations placed upon them. It hasn’t been an easy road, but that’s just the way that Jon Moxley likes it.

It is seen in his matches in CZW and GCW, or his NJPW matches against Juice Robinson, Minoru Suzuki, Tomohiro Ishii and many others. He thrives on challenge, and he steps up to the plate whenever he is needed. A leader of the locker room and an ace of the company in the ring, the contributions Moxley provided have made for a scenery within wrestling that makes everything beyond what we thought was possible of it.

As for the man himself; this was drenched with emotion, cathartic and unchained.

This is a man whose heart bleeds for this business, as does the rest of his body. If you go back and watch the later parts of his WWE tenure, you can see that the soul of Dean Ambrose was long stripped from him; all that stood was an empty, emotionless husk. To walk away from his Shield brothers and leave this side of wrestling behind, it was a huge deal, not just to those of us watching, but to him as well.

He could have very well sporadically made independent and NJPW appearances and be done with it otherwise. He could’ve just found some other chapter of life to open, and come back with a half-hearted Ambrose return a few years later, maybe challenging The Bloodline or The Visionary Seth Rollins. 

But he chose something else entirely. Still maintaining the success of The Shield, he does it in another company, in another way where he’s allowed to be himself. He’s allowed to be violent and free and creative.

And that’s his own personal paradigm shift.