Moxley’s Pulping of Orange Cassidy The Darkest Hour Before Dawn

This is war, and in that there’s a certainty that there will be sacrifices. They’re necessary, and in this AEW narrative where Jon Moxley and the Death Riders have waged an iron fisted revolution and unequivocal overthrow of the company’s power dynamics it’s a matter of who and when rather than “if.”

From the point Moxley’s group cleared the ring after sending Bryan Danielson to pasture, it became clear in the moment and in the weeks that followed that no one was ready to stand for what AEW could be (narratively) in contrast to Moxley’s volatile perspective.

All but one.

Moment by moment and piece by piece Moxley’s group has chipped away at Cassidy’s malaise to the point where “he’s gonna try” O.C.  has surfaced to vocally oppose the group. Cassidy watched Danielson fall, most of the AEW roster either cower or be equally crushed, the founders of the company run away, and finally saw one of his best friends suffer a brutal beatdown.

Since that moment we saw Cassidy stand tall, demand to fight the group on his own such as this last week against his old friend Wheeler Yuta, and suffer the repercussions for it. He was defiant, he was ballsy, he let his emotions show and he fought hard.

Orange Cassidy tried… and he failed.

Success was never the objective here though, and from a narrative point of view Cassidy knew that. It’s very much like the kind of story where the first hero to step forward in a hopeless battle knows as they’re doing it that there was a high probability the fight wouldn’t end well. Orange Cassidy was that hopeless hero, knowing full well that he would be outnumbered, and that he would be beaten to a pulp (it’s low-hanging fruit). Yet, he acted because he had to. He stepped forward when no one could because it was the right thing to do, and he did it knowing he was going to be sent toward utter oblivion by someone who in their own mind are the hero AEW deserves and needs.

Cassidy’s loss to Moxley is a catalyst, designed to be a defiant last stand meant to inspire the entire roster to get off their ass and fight. More importantly it’s a motivator to get them to decide whether or not they agree with the Death Riders’ philosophy of violence and tough love; do they continue to hide in the shadows, or step forward to help scrape O.C. off the canvas and take up the fight on his behalf?

He is kind of a folk hero, which is why this works story-wise. He’s beloved, but because of how he presents himself little is ever expected of him. Conversely that’s also why when he does step forward to take a stand — i.e. “try” — it has an inherent impact you can’t ignore. He’s just a regular guy who would do exactly what I think we would all do when faced with a choice of moral conscience — do you stand up and fight against what you don’t believe in, or do you throw your backpack of personal effects over your shoulder and slink away while the “world” burns.

Orange Cassidy’s contesting and failure to win the AEW world title from Jon Moxley was by design, and every moment over the last several weeks was built to culminate in this necessary beatdown. A violent, heinous, callous, necessary decimation by Mox and Yuta post-match to inspire the next row of AEW’s thin red line that Cassidy put himself at the head of in a row of one.

The Next Row Steps Forward

Where Moxley’s defeat of Cassidy brings their story full circle from Full Gear 2023, the post-match was what set up the coming months and ultimately what I think we can all guess to be the inevitable end to Moxley’s reign.

With so many moving parts around the main event players, for a moment you could have forgotten that Hangman Page is now a twisted, broken shell of his heroic self while he stormed down to the ring, cleaned house and stared Moxley down in the centre of the ring. For a brief moment it seemed Page was back to fight Mox to honour the AEW he knew, but the continued partnership between Page and Christian Cage proved to still be in effect as Cage snuck in behind Mox and hit him with a Killswitch as the disconnected Page simply watched. Following that, Jay White arrived to stop Cage from cashing in his contracted title shot. That led to a beatdown of White at the hands of the other Death Riders, and then finally as the key players dispersed from the ringside area Moxley’s crew was attacked by a crazed Darby Allin who crashed a car into Moxley’s SUV and raved like a man possessed. There was probably a better way to execute this, as while I think the heart of the decision was necessary the ending’s execution was somewhat overbooked.

All of these moments were necessary to set up the main event scene for the immediate future, and we will see how successful that becomes as the story moves forward. The ending of Full Gear puts Moxley squarely in the crosshairs of four people, all of whom have their own issues with each other in addition to Allin who has standing issues with Moxley’s group. It puts in motion a sequence of challengers that all either have issues with Moxley or have issues with each other. Whether this materializes as individual challenges or a multi-man triple threat or fatal 4 way at something like World’s End, the antagonistic Mox’s demand that people step up is satisfied and occurs as a consequence of the Full Gear main event. It’s mostly a matter of the combination of people involved and what makes sense. Judging from how the ending was executed it feels like we’re angling more toward a fatal 4-way rather than a series of singles. The x-factor is really Cage because his inclusion would imply he’s not going to be an opportunistic little weasel which is counter intuitive to his character right now.

The overall vibe of how things feel to me is Darby is the anointed one to challenge and overthrow Moxley in 2025 and to me it’s really just a matter of when that happens and how we get there. When it comes down to it, Allin winning feels like the natural progression of the story stemming from Cassidy’s loss whereas Cage, Page and White have all had issues with each other for months outside the orbit of the AEW title and Moxley. It’s obviously something in their crosshairs but it isn’t central to their story yet. Conversely, Cassidy and Allin’s stories are better aligned with each other as two people who have been around since the beginning and are among the main subjects of Mox’s defiant rallying call to the roster to step up and put him away. It additionally ties back to the story of how Mox defeated Allin for his title shot at Wrestle Dream that ultimately resulted in Danielson being retired. Synergistically it makes the most sense amid the ending of Full Gear, and I think the only thing to consider timing-wise is whether or not Allin plans to go through with the Mount Everest climb in the spring. If so, what is also on the table is Allin wins only to lose to Cage immediately. That feels very counter-productive though, and even more so reductive to the purpose of what we assume was Mox’s original story pitch for this run.

If the whole point of this was to push the young roster and inspire them through adversity, if Cassidy was the catalyst to inspire people like Garcia to win the TNT title or Allin to rise to the AEW title, then Allin does need to be the one to dethrone Moxley. While I’m sure Page, White and/or Cage will be in the mix over the next year, they should not secure Mox’s championship —  this is Darby Allin’s tale to complete. That’s the win that inspires the roster, that’s the win that pops the fans. That’s the moment that’s earned, and it’s the one that completes the story and vindicates Allin for his role in ending Danielson’s career.