Jon Moxley Explains Why He Chose to Stay With AEW on New Contract

AEW announced last Friday that current AEW World Champion Jon Moxley had signed a new five-year contract with the company, locking him down through 2027. Several sources then claimed Mox was operating under a handshake deal recently with AEW, which is wild when you consider his involvement this year as the Interim AEW Champion, his three-minute squash of CM Punk to become Undisputed Champion, the loss against Punk at All Out and his decision to give up a planned vacation in order to take part in the Grand Slam Championship Tournament and become AEW World Champion for a record third time last month.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere else,” Moxley said in a new interview with Sports Illustrated this week. “It’s the best job in the world, and I’m very lucky to have it. In AEW, all I worry about is wrestling. That’s my focus, and that’s a joy. I love storytelling, I love promos, I love wrestling. I love coming up with ideas for other people, I love learning. For me, it’s a perfect fit.”

Mox also discussed the wild past month of AEW and his role in it — “I was going to be gone and off TV for six weeks. It wasn’t that I needed a vacation. I was feeling good and feeling hot, but it had to do with what we were going to do for a story.

“Going into All Out, I was thinking, ‘After I get through this match, that’s it for a while.’ I wrestled the match, and we kicked each other’s ass. I was happy, Chicago was happy, everybody was happy. I went outside to smoke a cigarette with Eddie [Kingston] in celebration. That vacation lasted about 30 minutes. By the time I went to bed that night, I was pretty sure we were going to pretend that vacation was never going to happen. But it’s all good; you just roll with the punches,” he added.

Moxley concluded the interview by saying, “I want to be better tomorrow than today, and I want to be better next week. Our roster in AEW has so much talent. Men and women, it’s f—ing crazy. I’m jealous of most of them, and I want to work with all of them. Now there’s plenty of time to do it. I’m very excited about the future and what could possibly happen. I have no idea what will happen, just like I had no f—ing idea what was going to happen in 2019. So I can’t wait for what’s next.”