Jon Moxley Voices His Anger Over Having to Cut Promos About Roman Reigns' Leukemia in WWE

Jon Moxley sat down with Chris Jericho for a tell-all interview on the latest episode of Talk is Jericho. The new All Elite Wrestling star had plenty to say about the WWE, particularly over his frustration regarding scripted promos, a lack of storytelling and how his character was handled throughout his time in the company. During the interview Moxley told a story about an episode of Raw where he was asked to make a heelish comment about Roman Reigns' leukemia, something he states he felt horrible about the moment after he said it.

For those who don't remember, Moxley (as Dean Ambrose) cut a promo on the Nov. 11 episode of Monday Night Raw during his feud with Seth Rollins. At one point he mentioned Reigns, saying, "and we're all gonna get what we deserve. I mean, look at Roman. For Roman's part, for what Roman did in the Shield, he has to answer to the man upstairs. And what's worse...you have to answer to me."

Moxley recalled walking into Vince McMahon's office to tell him he wasn't going to use that line about Reigns, but that McMahon used his "jedi mind trick" to convince him the line wasn't so bad.

"Earlier I had to go into Vince, because in this promo there is a line, that's a very distasteful line taking a jab at my friend who had leukemia and is now going off to recover from that, Roman Reigns," he said. "I don't remember what the line was, but I went, 'I'm not saying that - are you kidding me?' I'm going right into Vince on this one, this is clearly a mistake. Yeah, this is clearly a mistake, right.

"I go into, I think it was a production meeting at the time, and I'm just like, 'Hey, real quick, this is, surely you don't want me to say this.' And he's like 'oh but Roman's part of the story, we've got to make sure he's still included, you turn on him and Seth,' and he kind of explains it to me, 'you know, you just say the thing about Roman, just include him'. And he said it in kind of an innocuous way, where it kind of didn't seem so bad, and I was just like, 'uh, okay' and all the writers were like 'oh, you gotta say this' and basically he gave me the Vince jedi mind trick," he continued. "Which I'm pretty immune to at this point, but every once in a while he still gets me. It's my fault, I got jedi-ed, whatever."

Then he recalled cutting the actual promo.

"So I think this one we did live, I cut the promo," Moxley said. "Soon as that line left my mouth, I went 'Oh my God I can't believe I just said that. It was just something about 'He's got cancer, sucks to be him' something like that. Not cool... and in the middle of all this, trying to get pooper scooper lines out of the script [referencing an earlier story about how he tried to re-write one of his promos that involved a line about pooper-scoopers], I don't even realize that this horrible thing that I shouldn't be saying, it's like oh my god."

But then things got worse, as Moxley said that McMahon tried to get him to cut another promo about Reigns' cancer. He said the line was so bad that it would've caused WWE to lose sponsors if he had said it.

"This is where I absolutely drew the line," Moxley said. "I said, 'Absolutely not.'"

"It is the worst line, I'm not going to say it on air... that's how bad it was," he continued. "It would've been like a thing where somebody had to get fired. Maybe sponsors. They would've lost sponsors, the Susan G. Komen and all that."

Ambrose will compete in his first AEW match at the Fyter Fest event on June 29 in Daytona Beach, Florida when he takes on Joey Janela.

H/T Cageside Seats