AEW’s Jon Moxley thinks WWE needs faith to find the next Shield

Jon Moxley thinks WWE can recapture The Shield’s magic if they just have some faith.

The AEW wrestler – who left the sports entertainment giant in 2019 – made the jump to the rival promotion and has thrived in a new environment, having made waves in the industry alongside Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins when they broke onto the scene at Survivor Series in 2012.

It was a different time for WWE with Florida Championship Wrestling – a precursor to NXT – acting as more of a developmental league where rising stars would hone their craft and character.

Asked whether the current model could still produce something like The Shield making a splash on Raw or SmackDown, Moxley exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘Anything could work. I mean, it’s different because you’re a known commodity on NXT now, whereas when we came in we were complete nobodies.

‘So, there’s a benefit to that. On the one hand, nobody knows who you are, but on the other hand, you have a completely fresh slate, you’re a complete mystery. You can come right in and starting whooping whoever’s ass you want!

‘The Shield might be the last big act that came from that old way of doing things before NXT really. You can do anything with anybody if you commit to them.’

Moxley suggested the issue isn’t the process of going from the Performance Center and NXT to the ‘main roster’, it’s a case of having the backing from people in charge.

He added: ‘The problem is – it doesn’t matter if they’re on NXT, if people know who they are or they don’t. If somebody’s getting over, you’re giving them the opportunity to get over, you’ve gotta actually follow through on pushing a guy or girl.

‘It doesn’t really matter where they came from! That could definitely happen again, it’s just they gotta follow through with it all the way!’

For Moxley – then performing as Dean Ambrose – and his Shield teammates, there was an overwhelming sense of ‘relief’ when they were able to make the transition from FCW to WWE itself and make an impact.

‘It was a lot harder to get called up,’ he recalled from that moment in time. ‘We were this island of misfit toys, and very occasionally somebody might get plucked out like a little toy from Toy Story, picking up the alien guy and he gets to go to this promised land of the main roster.

‘You always have this fear that you’ve never going to get called up, so this adds a lot of stress. You can’t just relax. Every day that passes down there before you get called up, you’re like, “Is this ever gonna happen? Am I gonna get fired today?” ‘

Having dealt with that fear for a while, the trio were delighted when they finally got the call and had a chance to prove their worth in a big way.

He added ‘From our time down there and our attitude, we had a huge chip on our shoulder. “We are gonna make the most of this opportunity and fuck everybody in our way”.

‘So we were very happy to be put in that high profile spot, and we wanted to be in that high profile spot because we were itching to prove that we belonged there. So, it was very comfortable for us.’

The former world champion – in both AEW and WWE – admitted he, Seth and Roman all felt like they belonged on Raw and could raise the standard set by those already there.

‘When we’re sitting down in FCW like, “f**k these motherf***ers on Raw! We’re better than all these dudes, we can hang with all these dudes! We’re gonna come in and fucking blow their asses away,”‘ he said.

‘It was a more hostile environment back then, so we stuck together. “F**k these motherf***ers! They don’t like us? F**k ’em!” We weren’t there to make friends.’

However, the tide started to turn as the trio built a reputation for their in-ring work, and top superstars were lining up to get a taste of the action.

‘Very quickly, people started wanting to work with us because we were having good-ass matches. All of a sudden, all the top guys were wanting to get in six-mans with us because we were having good matches,’ he explained.

‘And we’d make them look good! Me and Seth would bump our asses off for these dudes, you know?

‘It’s just indicative of – we were right. We turned out to be everything we said we were gonna be and we weren’t full of it.’

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