No end in sight for a Moxley AEW title run that has satisfied his original mission statement
Jon Moxley’s “Reign of Terror” continues…
…and if a Fightful report covering the fallout of last weekend’s AEW Dynasty pay-per-view is correct, there is no end in sight.
Coming out of Wednesday’s Dynamite, which saw the overarching storyline branch off to include the Young Bucks as Moxley fanboys (?), the report stated the following:
- At no point was Swerve Strickland planned to win the AEW championship at Dynasty.
- Mox is set for a longer reign, which currently sits at 182 days as of this writing to tie Chris Jericho’s reign.
- Internally the Death Riders story is touted as a success, citing strong quarterly hour and DVR numbers for their segments.
- those numbers have progressively improved over the course of 2025.
Above all, the negative online discourse surrounding the storyline is considered to be a vocal minority.
While I disagree, it’s difficult to argue against the heart of metrics. They indicate success and while it’s difficult to quantify the totality of that success, we have to take it at face value. It is under Mox’s current reign that these numbers appear true, and further to that point, he’s the first champion (by default) in quite some time to lead the company above a million combined viewers between cable and Max.
Online discourse is not what netted AEW its renegotiated Max deal, nor is that chatter that rewards it with advertising dollars. However, the company also needs to remember where its base is, and that so much of the company’s history is tied up within the online discourse. Neither should exclusively be the barometer.
It’s a tricky conversation because it takes our hands and leads on to a discussion steeped in the value of objective and subjective markers. Objectively, based on the metrics, the Death Riders’ story and Moxley’s fourth AEW world title reign have been successes. Subjectively, if we analyze the story, it appears there is no endgame. It feels as though there’s no point right now.
Had Swerve secured the title last Sunday, as we discussed that would have at least felt like a natural end to this portion of the story. The building blocks had been laid in the weeks ahead of Dynasty and the payoff would have served the story as a whole because it satisfies Mox’s demand that the AEW roster step up, and it would be achieved by someone AEW fans love.
Breaking Down Mox’s Challengers By The “Numbers”
While metrics are nice and something to tangibly point at as a marker for AEW’s successes in 2025, it shouldn’t be the only marker. And if you look beyond those metrics, what’s there? Since winning the championship Mox has had six successful defences. In those defences he’s faced and beaten:
- Orange Cassidy: The first to really stand up to Moxley, and he tried to rally the roster together.
- Hangman Page, Jay White and Cassidy: An extension of the defence against Cassidy where OC tried to get Page and White on the same wavelength but egos got in the way.
- Powerhouse Hobbs: Straight up beat him.
- Cope: Two shots at the title and actively stood up to him, with his more recent attempt being what I expected from a potential match in terms of its violence.
- Christian Cage: Joined into the first Mox-Cope hoedown only to fail miserably. He truly is the epitome of craving power as its own end.
- Swerve Strickland: A focused threat who had Mox dead to rights. If this were old school Mortal Kombat, in terms of their mentalities this would have been a Mirror Match.
These challengers can be separated into three camps.
The whole point of this story from the beginning was to embolden the AEW roster and drive them toward looking beyond their selfish egos to obtain prestige just for the sake of success. Secondly it was meant to push people toward their maximum potential. While everyone above shares the commonality in their drive to hold the AEW title, for example, White and Page could not get out of their own way during their opportunity. Their egos and preoccupation to destroy one another made them lose their focus — they were too obsessed with each other and becoming champion to its own end rather than actually representing something.
While White became a little more focused before his injury in trying to facilitate Moxley losing the championship, Page’s obsession with both White and Swerve has left him trapped within the whirlwind of his own prison. He’s too obsessed with preventing others from achieving their goals than actually achieving his own. He’s prevented himself from being the protagonist AEW needs, and by extension the champion it needs to balance out Moxley and the Death Riders. I think there’s room to deep-dive Page’s character arc at another time, but over the last few months Page has come to loathe himself to the point of waging a mutually destructive war against anyone in front of him. That’s the after effect of his feud with Swerve, who interestingly now appears more aligned with Page than not.
Cage is a perfect example of everything Moxley criticized. The entire span of time he held onto his championship briefcase, he continuously lay in wait for the perfect moment to strike. He looked to worm his way into matches, aiming for the cheapest path to victory with minimal effort. All to be champion; glory for glory’s sake. He didn’t really work for it, nor did he earn it. And then he failed rather miserably. So if Mox’s entire point was to push hard on people to force them to be the best versions of themselves, Cage failed spectacularly.
Speaking of which, while Cassidy and Hobbs were very much answering the call early on to fight, their will to stand up to Mox fell short and they never came off as threats. They more so felt like guys you knew wouldn’t stand for what Mox was doing, but mostly set the standard for meeting Mox’s philosophical challenge.
Cope was the first real threat on paper because his character is self actualized and knew his place and what he needed to be capable of. That was demonstrated by the end of their feud in that second match where they pulled out all their violent tricks — probably more than needed — to punctuate the volatility of the situation. From Copeland’s perspective, it was the need to get that belt away from the Death Riders. These matches demonstrated what one needed to do to threaten Mox, and it’s a tone Swerve embraced.
Dynasty Aftermath
Swerve should have been the one to dethrone Mox, but it’s obvious now in the aftermath of Dynasty that they’re playing at a more sweeping story. It’s clearer what the potential objectives are. So if we accept that Cage, White and Page were examples of the types of qualities Mox found disgusting, then we accept that Cassidy, Hobbs and Cope represented the positives of his messaging.
At the apex of it all is Swerve who represents all of that and is most like Mox in terms of character; the caveat to that is with him being on an arc of his own, he is already in a position mentally to go right at Mox. He didn’t need to become anything more than he already was. He just lost focus in the months leading to Dynasty. His loss is not on him, he had it taken from him by Matt and Nick Jackson.
Two things are clear now.
- This story has branched off in so many directions, it’s very much a company-wide narrative with so many stories intersecting with the Death Riders. While that is good in some respects, the potential exists for this to become very convoluted.
- If the company is intent on giving Mox a long reign, we’re running short on challengers. Realistically we’re looking at Darby Allin down the line when/if he returns, Will Ospreay, and Hangman Page.
The vortex of this narrative has been drawing in all of these players at such a rate that it has come to a highway exit and some of those figures are turning right at the off-ramp. For example, in the last few months Copeland has been feuding with Mox. By nature of dealiing with Mox, you need to deal with the Death Riders. As a consequence, that drew then-Cope allies FTR to help. Additionally we saw White and Cage circling the story leading into the Mox-Cope Revolution match, and now both have exited for different reasons. Throughout this run there have been active players directly trying to take Mox out, and then there have been players on the periphery. For example White, Page, Cage, and FTR have all been cycled out as needed.
Right now we have White injured, with Cage losing his title shot and becoming less prominent. Additionally with Cope losing all three of his title opportunities, he has wholly left the Death Riders vortex. We got that clean break at Dynasty when FTR turned on him. Presumably we’ll see a longer feud now, and I’m sure Copeland will find a friend somewhere for that. Generally they are removed from the story and the focus has shifted.
Similarly so, we have to assume that with the re-emergence of the Young Bucks and their screwing over Swerve, that Swerve too will be shifted away to focus solely on Matt and Nick. This one is interesting because of how it potentially interacts with the Owen Hart Cup. What makes it noteworthy is the Bucks’ statement on Wednesday that they screwed over Swerve as a favour for Page. Aside from their feud, you might recall last year Page claimed he would do everything in his power to ensure Swerve would never be AEW champion. There’s a contradiction there. On the one hand you have the Bucks screwing over Swerve supposedly as a favour to Hangman only to then try to side with Moxley.
That would seem normal for the situation, if not for Page storming down to the ring to try and stop the Death Riders from interfering. Firstly that indirectly helped Swerve and put him in a position to win. Consider that first. Secondly his interaction with Nana on Wednesday, where he actively proclaimed he did not act as he did to help Swerve, read as defensive. It read as though he was trying to convince himself of that following his more positive interactions with Swerve prior to Dynasty. It sounds absurd, but it seems as if common ground is being found. Further if we take those dynamics and consider them alongside the Bucks’ statement, it can be argued the Bucks are no less selfish than they were in the winter and did what they did to maintain a hold of AEW’s power and influence. They did it for themselves, not Hangman.
What we did not see were Page and the Bucks interacting, nor did we see Swerve and Page. Hangman’s character on its own merits has evolved so much in the last year or two. His feud with Swerve unfathomably altered how AEW approached his character and the presentation now reads as a combination of the downward spiraling Page of 2020-21, the violent man he has become, and the beloved AEW champion that carried the company on his back in the first part of 2022. It’s all in there. He reads as someone who hates what he’s become, identifies with Swerve, but can’t trust anyone, and still wants to do the right thing. That’s true even if the place it comes from now is darker.
Outcome of the Owen and Beyond
The question then becomes, with an AEW title opportunity with Mox on the line, how does this Hangman respond to recent events? Do the Bucks try and interject and help him? Does either Matt or Nick slide in as the wild card to lay down for Page? Do they just outright screw him over? Regardless of the roadway it seems the result is Hangman at odds with the Jacksons. This all affects the Owen depending on when they queue up the story beats. That in turn affects Mox’s next challenger.
Perhaps Page makes it through and earns a main event spot at All In only for the Bucks to side with Mox. Maybe then we see Swerve aid Hangman. Let’s be honest too — Blood and Guts isn’t too far away, and if their scheduling holds true to the timing of the last two years, Blood and Guts would happen one to two (or more) weeks after All In.
(If they set it for June, then who knows, but there are about 7 weeks between Double or Nothing and All In and trying to shove a Blood and Guts match between them doesn’t make a ton of sense if you want the focus to be on the Owen winner and Mox. I think it’s better used as a consequence rather than an intermediary showcase randomly thrown between the two PPVs.)
I think the only two potential winners that make sense are Page and Ospreay, and I’d guess in terms of title shots they’re happening in that order. Ospreay challenging at Wembley just makes sense. I think there is a very good chance the roles get reversed, but the former option makes more sense with Blood and Guts presumably so close after All In. Were that to occur we truly could see Swerve and Page on one side against a combo of the Bucks and the Death Riders.
Seeing as it would serve no purpose for the Death Rider team to lose if Mox is still champion, we need to start really considering where this storyline is heading if Page wins the Owen, gets the shot and then loses to Mox at All In. With the plot points lined up as they are, no one other than Ospreay is even close to active, ready and logistically sensible for Forbidden Door. Should that come, Ospreay needs to win and run bright and hot until the wheels fall off a la Danielson ahead of a pivot to someone else. We can’t wait for Darby Allin and I stand by that point prior to Dynasty.
With Allin beginning his Everest climb April 15, the climb itself takes anywhere from 6 to 9 weeks. Then he needs to rest and let his body heal from the stress of the climb. Assuming that timeframe to be true, let’s assume he returns safely and goes home on the average timeline a normal person should follow:
- He climbs April 15.
- Takes up to 9 weeks to climb and return to base camp.
- Rest for a week.
- A month off from training.
We’d be roughly looking at around late July, well after All In and mere weeks before Forbidden Door. While I’d assume Darby is crazy enough to try, Forbidden Door would be rushed and All Out might be a stretch. If all of that holds true, AEW needs to ask itself as a whole at one point does this Mox run begin to have diminishing returns and can we truly wait much longer for a title change?
The truth is that I think they will stay the course, and should the conqueror be Ospreay it will be less impactful than Page, Swerve or potentially Allin who all have closer ties to the story. And in the absence of one of those three dethroning Mox, then we as fans have to ask what the point of this title reign is. While the metrics are strong now, if we were judging the storyline by its original mission statement that criteria has already been satisfied. Sooner than later AEW needs to pay off this fourth Moxley title reign with a substantial conclusion.
