We thought we knew about all the different AEW backstage beefs... until last Thursday, when CM Punk accused Jon Moxley of refusing to lose to him in their World title unification match last summer.
Punk told his side of that story on Instagram. Mox doesn't do much social media, but his wife has a pretty popular podcast. So he gave his accounting of events to her, as the guest on a new The Sessions with Renee Paquette.
It's a very Moxley response to the situation:
"...It’s fukking annoying. Just because somebody said some stupid shyt on social media, that’s not news, but it is and become a thing. I don’t want to get dragged into this dumb shyt. I could fukking unload on a lot of fukking people right now. When I start getting dragged into this shyt, it tempts me to do that, but I'm not going to fukking sink to that level."
"I will say this, I'm going to give you a tidbit of information, from my point of view. The entire summer, I was not under contract — no contract. Free agent. I was at SummerSlam weekend wrestling El Desperado and shyt. I could have walked into SummerSlam that night with the AEW belt, had I been so inclined. Nobody knew that because I don't put my shyt out there in the world and let everybody know everything about my business. I was not under contract.
"The reason being, if you're curious, because I got out of rehab, my contract was coming up, they extended it for the time that I missed — cool. I'm glad they did because I didn't want to feel like I owed them anything. They extended it, it was coming up, they were talking to me about it. The last thing I wanted to do when I first got out of rehab, because all they were telling me was — logic would tell you — don't go back to wrestling because you're going to fall into the same old habits. I wanted to ease back into it and see what life was like on the other side. The last thing I wanted to do was hurry up and sign a big long-term commitment. What if shyt started going off the rails?"
In general, sober Mox loved wrestling and working with friends like Bryan Danielson & William Regal helped him decide to sign another contract with Tony Khan. But at the time Punk was coming back from broken foot, Mox wasn't legally obligated to do anything for AEW.
"That being said, during this time period, the night what's his dikk [CM Punk] is talking about, in Minneapolis, the night he came back and was hopping around on one foot, bumping around after me and [Chris] Jericho wrestled. We're talking later about stuff — keep in mind, at this time, this is my whole point — I basically don't work there, for all intents and purposes. Tony is not my boss. I don't have to be in this room. I don't have to do shyt. Even me being in this room and offering and agreeing to a storyline that puts you over at the PPV, if anything, I'm bending over backward for Tony and for this dude and the company and everybody. I didn't have to. I didn't have to do shyt. If anything, I was bending over backward. That's it. It's not even controversial."
His new contract includes coaching and mentoring the roster, and Mox seems to realize he has his work cut out for him there.
"I don't complain, I see the good in everything and I'm having so much fun and life is good. I don't want any negative bullshyt. I will say this, and I hate to say it because I don't think I've ever said anything even remotely negative about AEW, but I will say this. As an observer, I spent eight years on the indies, a couple years in WWE developmental, eight years in WWE — I have never seen so much bullshyt drama in one place in my entire fukking life.
"I hate to say that. I don't know if it's the age of social media, shyt gets blown out of proportion. One person types one stupid drunk tweet and all of a sudden it's all anybody wants to talk about."
It's not all bad, though. And it sounds like there are other drama-resistant folks Coach Moxley is looking forward to working with:
"Let me be clear, the vast majority of people there don't cause any bullshyt, but they're getting sucked down into the shyt like everybody else, into the muck. There are plenty of people who just want to get better and perform and just do this job. I'm not an official coach, I don't ever want to be a producer, an official producer. I don't want to wear a headset and write stuff down. I like being a coach, but I'm not an official coach. I can coach people that I think are worth it. I'll give time to anybody."
Jon Moxley on 'dumb s**t' with CM Punk, AEW's drama problem