Jon Moxley spoke with ESPN to talk about a wide range of pro wrestling topics including the differences between working in NJPW and WWE.
Moxley made his NJPW debut at the Best of the Super Juniors finals where he beat Juice Robinson to win the IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship. He defeated Shota Umino in a singles match that served as the opening match of the NJPW Dominion event in Osaka, Japan, which was aired live on NJPW World.
This is where Moxley recalled feeling like Vince McMahon was in the ring with him while wrestling under the WWE banner.
“[In WWE,] it’s almost like Vince is in the ring with you, the producer is in the ring with you,” Moxley explained. “It’s like you have two little bubbles on your shoulder, like three heads in the ring. All of a sudden when I got in the ring [in New Japan], five minutes into the match I was like, there’s no chatter. There was no producer-ref-Vince chatter. It was like silence. And I didn’t expect that. I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m alone again. It’s just me in the ring.’ And then I just started beating the [crap] out of Juice and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I used to do.'”
Moxley will wrestle the likes of Taichi, Jeff Cobb, Tomohiro Ishii, and Robinson in the G1 Climax 29 tournament.
