“One day you will all come to my funeral just to make sure I stay dead…but today is not that day.”
Robert Secundus: For years, years we sat content. Content to watch wrestling. Content to read comics. Content to write about one, or the other. What we didn’t know was that all that time, all that contentment, was just our souls growing tinder-dry. And when a spark was struck, those souls burst into infernal flame. They said we couldn’t do it. No one could make a hit column introducing comics readers to the world of professional wrestling by writing 6 thousand word articles about demon clowns and Grant Morrison. AND YET: HERE WE STAND. TRIUMPHANT IN OUR VICTORY. NO ONE BELIEVED AND YET WE SEIZED OUR TIME. WE SEIZED OUR OPPORTUNITY. In this business, to be the best you gotta write the best– and brother, let me tell you that Charlie and I– we wrote the damn best. No longer underbooked, no longer overlooked, we took our hellfire and forged something undeniable– we forged PanelPerView.
Charlie Davis: That’s right. We ain’t readin’ web columns anymore, we’re writin’ them and it’s about time the pillars of both comics journalism and wrestling journalism got knocked on their ass.
Two weeks. We gave you all two weeks. Two weeks to get ready for what was going to happen next. No more running, no more hiding, just pure, unadulterated, glorious literary expertise. They said we couldn’t do it, that we couldn’t merge comics and wrestling. Well…from where I’m standing, it looks like we started a revolution.
Really though…it is time for a bit of a paradigm shift. Which is what we’re here to talk about.
RS: Dear reader: Do you like X-Men? What’s your favorite era? When Claremont first takes over after Giant-Size X-Men #1 radically altered the title? Or maybe When Morrison re-invigorated the line with New X-Men? Or maybe the comics right now, in the wake of Jonathan Hickman et al annihilating our expectations for what X-Men comics can be and giving something shockingly new? Pull up a chair. Sit with us a bit. Charlie and I would like to talk with you about the joys of paradigm shifts in long running narratives. Charlie, what is it about these radical shifts that make people fall in love with them?
CD: I really think it’s basically as simple as the feeling like you’re shedding an old skin. Relaunces aren’t new and as comics fans, we’re basically immune to them. It’s just something that happens, but when we’re promised something big, when a relaunch is actually what most of them are promised to be…I kind of feel like it’s the stars aligning. For all people are afraid of change they crave it as well. Media tends to latch onto a premise, run said premise into the ground and then rinse and repeat. When a remake actually nails it or a comic actually feels like the status quo is shifting, it feels like actual, real change. That maybe we finally broke out of that bland, tired cycle. Also…people just like new shiny things.
RS: I want to extend your metaphor of the shed skin just a little bit. Because paradigm shifts aren’t just about finding something radically new. I find that, just like when a snake sheds its skin, and its pattern is far more vibrant underneath than it was before, these massive shifts often, by changing so much, help show what was already there in a bright new light. When Emma Frost takes center stage in New X-Men, when she becomes a major member of the lead team (and the team’s bruser), who she is doesn’t change– we can just see who she is in a new light. We can see her more clearly than before. So too Betsy Braddock Captain Britain, or Pirate Queen Kate Pryde. New X-Men and House of X radically alter so much, and by altering all of that, we can appreciate the thing that stays the same: the people at the heart of these stories.
CD: A big part…and actually maybe the biggest part of what draws me into wrestling just as much is comics is really the same thing. Characters and stories. They play with the same elements, often reflect the same things, and mostly follow the same rules. We talked a lot last time about how one big arc can take a character from point A to B while revealing something intrinsic to them that we can’t always see. While The Fiend isn’t so much a radical reinvention of the character of Bray Wyatt, and more of a distillation of already existing elements, he does provide a window into the next stop on our tour of reinvention. What happens when someone wants to throw the shackles off? What happens when frustration gets the better of you and you make choices to radically shift the landscape you were standing on? What happens when you just say $&%$ it and go for broke. Well…some really special things.
Let’s talk about Jon Moxley.
RS: And to talk about Jon Moxley, I think we have to talk about Dean Ambrose. Charlie, I know this is a lot to ask in a short column, but could you summarize who Dean Ambrose was, and the overall arc of his career at WWE?
CD: Dean Ambrose was a complicated man. Just thinking about him makes my heart seize up a little. And I mean that in the both the best and worst way possible. If I had to describe Dean in a few words some of them would be reckless, dangerous, broken and haunted. Dean debuted in WWE as a member of The Shield (no not SHIELD). Three men as tight as brothers, closer maybe even than that, who believed that the balance of power in the company needed to shift. That there was no more justice, no more rules and no more honor. That in order to build a better world, they had to tear down the old one.
The Shield was Dean’s life, he believed in their ethos more than his brothers, Seth and Roman. He spoke their truth, was magic on the mic and exuded a wiley and dangerous charisma laced with the true heartedness of a man who would never turn his back on you. A shame then when Seth Rollins, his brother in arms stabbed him in the back to make a deal with the proverbial devil for fame, glory and dark ambition. I am waxing pretty poetically here, but Dean Ambrose broke the day Seth Rollins turned on the Shield. Dean as a character became unhinged. Focused solely on revenge, anger pushed him forward, but it also destroyed him over time. As a character on TV Dean sucked me in. His arc was compelling, his motivations real and I could see that as a performer–he gave his all each and every time he went out to cut a promo or wrestle a match. If it wasn’t for Dean I probably wouldn’t be writing this article with you. Which is why it’s unfortunate that…well…Dean Ambrose is dead.
After a very real injury that took him out of the company for almost a year, kayfabe [Ed. note: in the fiction of wrestling] and real life mixed a little too much and seven months after his return Dean Ambrose was no longer in WWE. Broken, diluted, bitter and angry….Dean’s last months in WWE were. Well. Not good. I think you might know of what I speak, Rob.
RS: I first started watching WWE during this time. There was just something…. Fundamentally unworkable in his character and how the company tried to write it. They tried to make him a villain by turning him against his friend who had cancer in real life. They made him talk about…. How the crowds smelled? Funny? It was. Bad. People hated Dean Ambrose, and not in the way that people are supposed to hate heels. When he was handed the mic people groaned. And for those who loved Ambrose, who loved the Shield, who knew what an incredible performer he was, I imagine this time was agony. But then he left the WWE. He got away from the people who were determined to run his character into the ground.
CD: I still haven’t gone back to watch that. I stay away from it like it might burn me or cause me bodily harm. I am not unconvinced that it won’t. But you’re right. He left. He got away. HE. WAS. FREE. And if I can pop back into the realm of comics for a moment, I have to imagine that being a comics fan, specifically an X-Men fan in the late 90’s was like. Not so much upset at a bad repackage (that would come later) but tired of the same old thing. Once WWE realized that they had driven Dean into the dirt they tried to pull him up for one last run. One last time with the Shield. Unfortunately he was still broken. The same tactics wouldn’t work this time. They knew it, Dean knew it…and he went quietly into the night. Or at least that’s what everyone thought he was going to do.
RS: The man who portrayed Dean Ambrose told the WWE that he was done with wrestling. That he hoped to retire. And yes, Dean Ambrose retired. But then, once his contract was fully expired, this video appeared:
Meanwhile, a new wrestling company was taking a massive gamble; for decades, there had been no real competitor to the WWE in America. But a group of wrestlers desperate to kill the business as it was and rebuild it as something new had put together a proof-of-concept Pay-Per-View. This was All Elite Wrestling’s Double Or Nothing. And it was an incredible night, featuring a massive variety of incredible performers. And then– and then–
CD: Dean Ambrose is dead. Long live Jon Moxley.
In the closing moments of the show, as Chris Jericho gloated to the crowd, demanding a thank you from the audience and standing over a beaten and bloody Kenny Omega…the crowd erupted. From the top of the stands, in the heaving masses, stood Jon Moxley. All at once everything and nothing like Dean Ambrose. He walked to the ring with purpose, slipped behind an unsuspecting Jericho and drilled his head into the mat. Smelling blood in the water, Mox turned his attention then to Kenny Omega, the darling of New Japan Pro Wrestling and threw him off a large stack of prop poker chips at the top of the stage. He outstretched his arms, eyes closed as the crowd chanted his name. Moxley Moxley Moxley and he was reborn.
RS: I can’t describe what it was like watching that live, with other people who had only ever known Dean Ambrose at the character’s nadir. Here was this man with a face we knew– but an aura, a swagger, a power we had never seen before. An incredible number of emotions swelled and mixed and swept through the room; and when the credits rolled all we could say was hell. YES. Over the Summer of 2019 (which feels like a lifetime ago) we watched in awe as Mox revelled in glorious wrestling violence. And then on the first episode of AEW Dynamite, my roommate and I went and saw in-person Jon Moxley stalk Kenny Omega throughout the Capital One Arena and eventually slam him through a GLASS TABLE. The man who had been Dean Ambrose had undergone a:
So Charlie: who is Jon Moxley?
CD: Another complicated question, but even so, this one is easy. Jon Moxley is who Dean Ambrose used to be. Mox loves violence, has a deeply engraved code of honor and will beat the hell out of anyone who gets in his way. He’s a man set to prove a point. To redefine wrestling by taking it back to its simplest component parts. A little earlier Rob you mentioned that sometimes when you have a hard reset, when you shed the skin, in that new shiny surface you can see things that might have been dulled over time. That’s the case with Mox. He felt brand new, but somehow not new at all. This man had always been there, in fact, he was here first; we just couldn’t see it. Something radical, but somehow still the same. It’s a coincidence that 2019 brought us both Mox and Jonathan Hickman’s new radical direction for the X-Men.
RS: And in both those cases, the paradigm shift doesn’t just renew old fans’ love; it also provides a new stepping-on point. If you found either of the above videos compelling, you don’t have to go back years and years to follow this character’s story. You can begin with AEW’s Double or Nothing PPV, and watch his individual promos, segments, and matches from May 25, 2019 to the present. You’ll find a creative genius reborn, in love once more with his art, as he paints a landscape of violence across the company.
CD: It’s funny really how many things try and capture the pure, raw energy of something reborn and simply fail. Wrestling is an interesting case because we get to see these transformations happen almost instantaneously. Comics are very much a slow burn, and we usually have to be along for the ride to see the full breadth of what’s changing and what a new world looks like. The more I think about it, the more 2019 was a really stand out year for change across comics and wrestling.
RS: Absolutely. 2019 was the year of HoXPoX, the year of AEW, the year of Becky “The Man” Lynch, the year of Immortal Hulk, the year of Jon Moxley. In both mediums, characters and stories were reinvented in such a way that old fans’ love was renewed, and new fans were able to feel that love for the first time.
CD: We both know that it takes more than just a fresh coat of paint to elevate characters and stories. There has to be a real passion for things to be different, to be better. Both Hickman and Morrison take a rather radical approach, placing the X-Men in new scenarios that at the time had never been explored before. Hickman has said many times that even with the radical shift, he never wanted to lose what made the X-Men intrinsically themselves. In a lot of ways, they are more connected and more of a family now than they have ever been. It cast a tremendous new light on things that were always there, yet had been covered in wear and tear and years of neglect. I really don’t think Mox’s story is much different.
If You Want To Watch…
- This story? Moxley debuted at Double or Nothing 2019, available at BR Live.He made appearances throughout the summer of 2019 at Full Gear, Fyter Fest, Fight for the Fallen, and All Out, all of which are also available at BR Live. Following these are one year of appearances on AEW Dynamite, available at TNT.com or, outside of the united states, at FiteTV.
- This backstory? Available on the WWE Network. If you search for “Dean Ambrose,” you should be able to find all of his segments. Dean Ambrose debuted in 2012 and departed WWE in 2019. Also possibly of interest: Moxley himself discussing this time on Chris Jericho’s podcast.
- This character today? Tune into AEW Dynamite, Wednesdays on TNT, TNT.Com, or FiteTv.
Charlie Davis is the world’s premier Shatterstarologist, writer and co-host of The Match Club.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
