Jericho: Don't be an artist and be creative.
Mox: Don't worry - we've taken care of everything! You just show up. So you're just like oh, okay. So what do I do in my off-time? What do I have to think about? Uh... so you try to fill it with other things, and that's a recipe for a very unhappy person. A very unfulfilled existence. And I think just like a depression set in at some point, like not to minimize anybody who actually goes through like real depression - I remember like WedMD-ing it, cause there were days like, TV days where I'd be like, be in bed, wake up and just like stare at the ceiling and like, couldn't get out of bed. Like no motivation to work out, no motivation to do...
Jericho: Depression!
Mox: ...just dreading going, having this moment with the writer that I'm gonna have that I described, to Vince, like, it's crazy. The fog that has drifted slowly since it became real, that like - I am leaving, it's all good - to now, I'm like literally an entirely different person.
Jericho: They call it Stockholm Syndrome, where people are like in prison and they end up falling in love with their captor, and can't envision not being in prison and not being told what to do by the warden, for example. And I'm not saying it's like the same thing as WWE, but when you're in that system, you don't realize what it's like in the outside world. And when you get on the outside world, it's like, I can't believe it's this easy. I can't believe this is really how it can be, not in that world.
Mox: Yeah, it's crazy, man. Looking back on it now, I can't believe I hung in there that long. And it's a shame to think of like, I don't every want to be one of those "I could have been a contendah" guys who sit and bitch about the past like, what should have been. "I shoulda been on top but I got screwed by Hogan..." While I do think there was a lot of stuff they missed out on with me, I don't care. It's over. I don't think it was meant to happen. I think I was meant to be sitting here today, talking to you. Cause the ultimate goal, or the ultimate reward I got from WWE was that now, I'm sitting here with all my freedom, and I got to do that. And it's like, it's the ultimate gift because it's almost like, now I get to start over. It's like I'm 18 again. I can be anything I want to be, I can - as a wrestler, as a performer, as an artist - I can do anything. And now I have experience and stuff that I can... I'm starting ahead of the game now, you know?
Jericho: And you can also, we discussed this before, make a difference. You or I going back there, or you staying. It's the WWE. It's not going anywhere, it's the machine, it is what it is. We have a chance to actually change things in the business with AEW and be a big part of this new history.
Mox: Dude, it's very exciting. Like, to be able to be a difference-maker is such a - I haven't had that in, I can't even remember. One thing that I want to do is cause like, if I have something to prove, it's that I want to prove that your creative process, the WWE's creative process sucks. It does not work. It's absolutely terrible. And I've said that to Vince. I've said that to Hunter. I've said that to Michael Hayes. I think that - I can't even tell you how their system works. It's some kind of system of meetings that take place in Stamford with the home team, it's writers and producers and production meetings and nobody knows what's approved and what's not and like the bureaucratic red tape you have to go through to get anything approved is just - it's crazy. It doesn't work. It's killing the company. I think Vince is the problem. And not so much Vince, but Vince and whatever the structure that he built around himself, probably starting I'd imagine like 2002 after the sale of WCW, and he started building this infrastructure around himself - this team of writers and whatever and producers and however he does it, and this is how WWE is and this is what the product is, the product sucks. Great talent, amazing talent, none of this is their fault, you know? So I'm hoping, if I have a goal with AEW is that's we prove that Vince's way sucks. I mean this is not what I'm gonna focus on, because it's not about competing with WWE. I don't think that's any of our...
Jericho: Yeah. It's an alternative.
Mox: ... any of our mission. We're just gonna be over here doing our best. Putting on our best product. And if a byproduct of that is it pushes WWE to re-evaluate their creative process, and it makes Vince - not that he's gonna step aside, we all know he's gonna die in his chair - but maybe he'll listen to somebody else's ideas. Maybe he'll be open to doing it a different way.
Jericho: Maybe he won't micro-manage everything so much. I think that's the biggest problem.
Mox: The last - I've never been micro-managed more than I was in the last four months, once I turned heel. It was so weird.
[Jericho cuts a promo advertising electric toothbrushes for Father's Day.]
[Jericho follows this up with a promo advertising the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's campaign to remind you to buckle your seatbelt.]
Jericho: Did you feel at any point, besides the few times you mentioned with Nia Jax, that they tried to bury you in any other way?
Mox: Well... so after that they did the weird press release, then they put me against EC3, debuting from NXT. Great talent, great friend of mine, excited to work with him. They have EC3 come in as a babyface, defeat me in two minutes. I dunno if this is before or after the press release, uh... it's at like the same time. The crowd does not like this, because it's transparent what's happening and this is not a... this is not good for EC3, because now he's gonna get the backlash.
So it was an unfair position for him to be put in. So we get to that weekend, I'm working with EC3 on house shows, now I'm the biggest babyface on the show. I'm a heel, I'm thumbing him in the eye, I'm making fun of the town, it doesn't matter, they're...
Jericho: Because you're the bigger name and you're the underdog now.
Mox: Yeah, they're violently rejecting him as a babyface and they're cheering the hell out of me. It's got nothing to do with him, it's like an anti-WWE...
Jericho: Yeah, you're a martyr.
Mox: Yeah so... then they go, talking to the writer by text and he's like "You're gonna work with EC3 again, he beats you in two minutes again," and I was like, I couldn't help it, I was like, "Fine, that's cool. Am I the only one that sees the inherent problem in this?" And even the writer knew, was like "Oh, that it's making you a babyface or looks like we were burying you and that's backfiring?" and I was like, "Yep, that stuff, that's what I was talking about" and he was like "Yep, I know."
But it's Vince, "He's got you, he's determined!" So by the time we get to that Monday there are, from what I understand, the reports from the house shows, the producers telling him what happened, and he's pissed. Apparently he's like, mad about this. That like, god forbid, so sorry that the fans, who I've busted my ass for for years, might be upset at the fact that you want to bury me on the way out, y'know, like... Sorry, dude, y'know?
That I've given my body up for, sorry that they have a shred of respect for me that you apparently don't have. So then I get to TV that night and they're just like, Jamie's a producer, he comes up to me and he goes, "You're going to do a little promo with Seth, he's a heel and you're a babyface." We just switch roles, no explanation, so I guess that was their solution.
And then like, the Shield comes back and we do that whole thing, and then I start working a series of matches with Drew McIntyre who, we've had a bunch of great matches but now it's like increasingly more DQ matches and every week I think this is finally where they write me off. So they put me through tables, they put me head in a guardrail, smashed my head off, he's kicking my head off every week, now it's like a different gimmick match every week so it's like they tried to kill me figuratively twice and it backfired so now they're just going to kill me literally and... y'know...
I was like okay and just kept, y'know... and it was crazy because like a couple weeks before Mania and I'm like in the main event of Raw and I'm like... this is... impossibly somehow I'm in the main event of Raw! I thought for sure they were gonna take me off of TV, but he has to be in control somehow, he has to exert whatever control over me he could.
Jericho: How big was it for the Shield to kinda be disbanded and be done? Because the Shield, I think, you're looking at one of the, probably one of the biggest factions, with DX top two, top three of all time and to me that was a huge thing from a business, kind of a sideline business thing where not only are we losing Ambrose, but we're losing the Shield as well.
Mox: Yeah, I mean, uh... you know how much I got paid for the last show I did?
Jericho: And now this is the Shield special...
Mox: This is a house show.
Jericho: Talking about, uh... Hello, Renee! Hi. The Shield special, live on the Network...
Mox: This is literally, they turned this into a special, flew in writers and camera men and everything, put it on the Network, basically for me... Five hundred dollars. Got paid five hundred bucks for that sucker. [Laughter] I can just imagine Vince and like Carrano and them, at the, "What are we gonna pay?" "Five hundred bucks, screw him!" Which is like, the minimum... what you get just to show up and not work.
Jericho: That's what you get if you're an opening match guy from NXT, y'know, not building a whole special around you.
Mox: Yeah, if you show up to TV and they don't use you, you get five hundred bucks. Or like I think that's what extras get.
Jericho: Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Mox: That's like, the minimum. Five hundred bucks for a Network special, c'mon! I thought about calling them for a second, but I was like, nah, it's funnier to just...
Jericho: Do you remember when we headlined Asheville, it was the Ashville Street Fight, Jericho vs. Ambrose, and they paid us seven hundred and fifty bucks?
Mox: Yeah, and you said "I don't get off my couch for seven hundred and fifty dollars!"
Jericho: Yeah, I told Vince, I said "Next time can I set up a table, sell some gimmicks in the back of the room like Virgil?"
Mox: Yeah, right?
Jericho: And you know what that is, that's just one last little kinda "Eff you, Ambrose, here's your five hundred bucks, see you later pal!"
Mox: Yeah, I actually like it, I should frame that check.
Jericho: Yeah, don't spend it, for sure. Um, a few other things as we start to wind down here-- when you started really embracing the concept of AEW and now you've made your first appearance and I mean, I think that like, we talk about the happenstance and the serendipity and all that sort of stuff, but what is your goal for coming to AEW? Because you're very driven, you're very creative, and you seem like you have... you feel you have something to prove, I'm picking that up from what we've been saying the last hour or so.
Mox: Anyway, for me it's about being the best version of myself, finally. And being, y'know, having the creative freedom to just like, oh, come up with an idea and just do it. Well we're gonna have that here in AEW and y'know, from the first time I talked to them, they're just like... I've always been friends with Cody, always vibed with him. Cody's kinda like me in that, first and foremost a wrestling fan. Like when he was like, Stardust and stuff and he'd be painting up, he'd be in the locker room, he'd have his little iPad and put on WWE Network and just put on...
Jericho: Matches.
Mox: Put on, like, old WCW or whatever.
Jericho: WarGames '89 or something like that.
Mox: And like, we always like, me and him would always just sit there and watch all this wrestling and talk about it, 'cause we just like, we love wrestling. And he has a very... We think of wrestling in a very similar way, and uh, just everything he said from the get go was like, yo, play your music your way. And y'know, he went through a lot of the same stuff during his exit from WWE, y'know. When I was telling him about my, he was like I went through the same thing, y'know, was like the kinda depression you go through where you're trapped in some thing you don't want to be, we share that experience.
And just, uh... I feel like a lot... Me and him are kinda two sides of the same coin in a lot of ways. Been through a lot of the same experiences but we went through them at different times and a different order. I like that wrestling can be anything, y'know, he says it can be anything. We can have the lucha guys, you can have the hardcore match, you can have the old school, and I'm like, for so long I've been told wrestling is this, this is all wrestling is.
I'm like, I can't wait to just, like, open up my mind and, like I said, it's kinda, it's almost like, my goal is like, not look at it like I've got something to prove to Vince or WWE or anything like 'cause I don't give a shit about WWE. They're in the past. I want them to be good, I want... if a byproduct of us being good is they have to change their creative process and uh, they get better, 'cause I want my friends that are there to be happy and my wife's there and I want her to be happy. I want everyone to be happy, I want the business to be better, I want the fans to be happier with their product, so...
But I don't care about them. They're in the past, they're on the back burner. I wanna be the best version of myself, y'know. This past month I've been home, only got a month home to just like, rest and recharge, so I've just been, chiropractor massage, training twice a day, y'know, getting everything fixed. Y'know I got hooked up with a new trainer, Gil Gardano here, he's actually Randy Couture's strength and conditioning coach, and I was just like, "Yo, let's just, I wanna just start over, build a foundation from the get go as, like, as an athlete."
So working on like agility and strength and power and hopefully a year from now I'm just like a fully new athlete, y'know? 'Cause it's like the whole world is my oyster now, I can do anything, be anything, y'know, like...