During his latest interview with Wrestling Observer Radio AEW superstar Jon Moxley spoke about his world title defense against Jake Hager in an empty arena brawl, a bout that took place early on in the COVID-19 pandemic when there were zero crowds. Highlights of what Moxley learned from that match can be read below.
Says without crowds he knew he and Hager had to make their fight stiff:
I did make a serious effort to be like, ‘How can we do this? What can be done?’ Legitimate wrestling, technical wrestling, can actually work in this environment. Everything has to be stiff, tight, and physical because you can’t rely on the crowd. Everything has to be like a real fight. I had a match with Jake Hager when it was first going down where we were like, let’s just build the whole world title program in three hours. Jake is a shooter, let’s just have a fight. We did some really cool shit. I love that fucking match.
Says that he later learned that empty arena brawling does not come off well on television:
What fucked it up was later, when they played it, there were four fucking commercial breaks, which made it endless long, but we did cool tight wrestling shit. I learned later that brawling in an empty arena does not work. We taped that match a month ahead of time and by the time I learned that, we had already taped the match. Ah, kinda fucked up there. Brawling around the building in an empty arena does not come off well on TV.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful
)