'That could’ve killed us' - Jon Moxley on how the pandemic affected AEW

Jon Moxley had the uphill task of carrying the AEW World Championship through a pandemic era that had never been seen before. Fans are a huge part of what makes wrestling great and in their absence, AEW had to improvise a lot to ensure they didn't lose their audience. Jon Moxley was tasked with giving promos from his home for a while due to pandemic restrictions.

Since the pandemic era of AEW is over heres my top 4 matches of that era pic.twitter.com/9cPjTH75IW

— Tribeast #FreePalestine (@SmarkNation) June 20, 2021

In an interview with Cincy: 360, Jon Moxley spoke about how the pandemic changed things around in AEW. He stated that the pandemic "could have killed" AEW but everyone pulled through. He went on to say that even though the Wednesday Night War was going on, AEW came out "smelling like roses."

And 2020 hit everybody hard man. That could’ve killed us with not having TV, but we figured out a way to run TV and everybody kind of pulled together and worked to figure it out. Now that that’s like finally kind of over, that was a long, tumultuous kind of period. And then we had to go against, we’ve got this Wednesday Night War thing going on. So we’re in the trenches, we’ve got no fans, we’ve got a pandemic, we’ve got this other company trying to hurt us. And we came through that smelling like roses. (H/T: WrestlingInc)

Jon Moxley says the pandemic era made everyone stronger in AEW

My favorite AEW moment of the pandemic era. pic.twitter.com/SxP8gFQWJT

— 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙎𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙚 (@THEPWSCENE) July 1, 2021

Jon Moxley went on to say that the pandemic period galvanized the AEW locker room and it's a very exciting time to be a wrestling fan now with all the partnerships in place between different promotions.

Now it’s all positive on the other side. It kind of galvanized everyone together. Now it’s like, the train is rolling man so you better get on now. The wrestling business is changing right now and it’s all for the better. I think it’s going to be picking up new fans along the way. It really feels like anything can happen in pro wrestling right now, as far as like different people from different promotions going back and forth. Whether that be New Japan or Impact or AAA or whatever, it literally feels like anything is possible right now. So it’s cool time to be in wrestling, cool time to be a fan. You can feel that something is going on right now. It’s all very interesting.

AEW did provide some memorable moments during the pandemic and now, with fans back, has hit the million viewer mark three weeks in a row. Every week is must-see television.