Felix Upton on June 1, 2019
Jon Moxley’s official return to the pro wrestling world came in the form of an epic trailer that announced he was officially outside of WWE’s walls. This prison break themed video gained a ton of attention, but it didn’t happen without Vince McMahon making an appearance off-camera.
While speaking to Talk Is Jericho, Jon Moxley revealed how his teaser trailer started and the inspiration behind it. He also received a call from McMahon in the middle of shooting it where The Chairman had a favor to ask.
Moxley said he realizes that social media is the way of the future so he had to utilize it. He had a Twitter account for years because WWE made him get one, but he never used it. He didn’t tweet once while in WWE and never received a blue verified check mark either. All that changed the minute he was out of WWE.
“Kinda the inspiration for this was the Venom teaser trailer when I first saw it. It was only like 30 seconds and you didn’t see Venom and the movie didn’t come out for 8 months, but it gave you just enough to where you’re like ‘Oh I can’t wait until that movie comes out! We have to wait so long!’ At that point I knew that likely Double Or Nothing was gonna be the first appearance you know and I had to go through great lengths to make sure I’m not advertised or anything before that. I’ve been keeping people at bay and telling them to F off so I apologize to everyone I’m doing that to.”
“My idea was to make a movie trailer on myself and drop it exactly midnight on April 30th. Like so it’s literally the minute that I get out of WWE it’s like ‘Oh it’s about to get real — it’s on.’ So the people get excited.”
Moxley said “it became ambitious,” but he sought out help in making his teaser trailer. Everyone he knew who could make a trailer like he wanted was in WWE so he turned to former death match wrestler turned filmmaker Sick Nick Mondo who understands breaking glass and going through bloody wars for the passion for the art.
Moxley said they filmed the trailer in February and it took two straight days in LA. It cost Moxley $8,000 when it was all said and done, but the hype he gained from the video was worth far more.
Then Moxley got a very interesting request from Vince McMahon in the middle of working on this new trailer to hype his return to the world outside of WWE.
“Vince texted in what would be four in the morning his time while I was filming this to try to get me to extend my contract to do the Europe tour. He’s like, ‘Hey pal I need a favor need you to — the biggest box office we have would be The Shield last run through Europe, whatever these dates.’ For a half a second I was like ‘eh’ and then I was like ‘no’ like now you want a favor from me, but a few months ago this isn’t how you wanted it to go. Now you need a favor.”
“It’s like dude, it’s not like you’re gonna put me on WrestleMania and do some angle then we’re gonna follow up on the tour with it’s like ‘no screw you.’ You want me to do your brutal post-Mania tour, but I’m like call Dave [Bautista], call Triple H, call Brock you know what I mean? Call somebody else. I ain’t your Huckleberry this time. So what I told him was that ‘sorry I’m committed to a film project’ which technically I wasn’t lying because I knew he would take it that I was on a movie set, but the film project I was committed to was dropping this at exactly midnight. When I’m like I’ve already committed. I’ve already paid for it. I’m out here running through fields at four in the morning like I’m done man. This is happening.”
Moxley said that the video turned out just as he had envisioned it and the best part is that he didn’t even have to tweet it because his “social media guru guy” did it for him. So the video was automatically set up to debut at midnight on the day that Mox was a free man. The rest, as they say is history.
If you use the quotes in this article credit Ringside News
June 1, 2019 7:52 am
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