AEW's Jon Moxley Talks Brutal Matches He's Been In, This Generation's Approach To Pain Medication
AEW World Champion Jon Moxley stopped by the Dan Le Batard Show to tease a big surprise for an upcoming AEW Dynamite. He also explained the physical and mental toll pro wrestling can have on a person, but said he is in a good place physically despite the amount of punishment his body has taken over the years.
"Pro wrestling is the most physical sport in the world," Moxley stated. "A lot athletes, football players and people from other sports, think 'I can just walk right in there and do that. It's not a real competition. Anybody can do that right?' That's not the case at all. It's one of the hardest things to master on the intellectual side and the physical side.
"I've been through everything. It's not just getting slammed on thumbtacks and barb wire, getting thrown off cages, getting set on fire and all that – that's the easy part. Just the years and years of being on the road and being on tour for 250 days a year, night in and night out getting slammed and working through injuries. It takes a toll on your body, but I'm in a pretty good place physically right now."
Le Batard was perplexed about Moxley's casual attitude about getting set on fire or thrown onto barb wire. He mentioned the staph infection that Moxley suffered, and Moxley talked about the pain that it had caused him at the time.
"That's not fun. Surgeries and hospitals are not fun," Moxley noted. "I've been pretty lucky. I've only had one issue that required surgery and it required three of them because it was a tricep repair, then they go back in for a staph infection, and then back in again over a year later to get rid of the rest of the Staph infection. So it was really only one issue, but I've been pretty lucky overall.
"People are like, 'How do you feel today?' My baseline is that I feel like crap. I'm just so used to being in pain. It's a pretty chill morning here, I can barely move at this point. I like to train early in the morning. If I train at 9 a.m., I have to get up at 7 a.m. because it's gonna take me that long to loosen my body up and warm up."
This again shocked Le Batard who brought up past generations of wrestlers who have died young or have suffered from addiction to pain medication. Moxley said that the current generation has learned from the mistakes from previous generations.
"Luckily our generation now has kind of left that for the generation past us," Moxley stated. "We learned from the mistakes of the past generation. You won't really see a lot of that anymore. We got a really young, healthy generation."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.