What if AEW's Jon Moxley Never Left WWE?

Jon Moxley has been vital to the rise and success of AEW since the very beginning.

From the moment he made his triumphant arrival at All Elite Wrestling's premiere pay-per-view Double or Nothing 2019, Moxley was prominently positioned as one of the faces of the franchise. He was a centerpiece in the early days of Dynamite and helped carry the company through its pandemic period the very next year.

Even today, Moxley remains an important piece of the AEW puzzle as he prepares to challenge Will Ospreay for the AEW World Championship in the main event of All Out while simultaneously reigning as AEW Continental champion.

All of that begs the question of what would happened had Moxley never left WWE.

Not only would the career trajectory of the artist formerly known as Dean Ambrose been drastically different, the seismic shift the pro wrestling landscape experienced with the launch of AEW in 2019 may have looked a little different as well.

Dean Ambrose Hit His Ceiling in WWE

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By the time Dean Ambrose departed WWE in the spring of 2019, his Shield cohorts were already multi-time world champions. Ambrose accomplished quite a bit in his seven years on the main roster had only one reign as world champ to his credit.

His WWE Championship reign lasted a measly three months in 2016, and despite being drafted first by SmackDown that summer, he was never truly portrayed as "the guy" in the company, even on his own brand. He was never booked remotely as strong as Seth Rollins or Roman Reigns.

After his main event push was cut short, Ambrose was demoted to the midcard while Rollins and Reigns remained fixtures at the top of the card. The Lunatic Fringe spent the last three years of his run floating around the Intercontinental Championship scene and latching onto short-lived Shield reunions for relevance.

Ambrose's bad booking made it abundantly clear he had hit his ceiling and that those in charge at the time didn't view or value him as highly as they should have. Had he stayed, his status on the show very likely wouldn't have changed and he would have become more of a stepping stone.

Leaving was the only way he could reinvent himself as a main event attraction.

Being Elevated by the Shield and Bloodline Lore

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Dean Ambrose's long-awaited heel turn at the end of 2018 was one of WWE's biggest creative fumbles during that period. It was so horribly handled that the company virtually had no choice but to abandon his heel run within a matter of months.

He even reunited with Rollins and Reigns right before WrestleMania 35, but that was largely because everyone was aware Ambrose was on his way out and one last Shield reunion was a must. Odds are he would have stayed in the heel role had he re-signed with the company.

Reigns turning heel himself was inevitable, as was the ill-fated Performance Center/ThunderDome era of WWE due to the looming pandemic. The Tribal Chief would have arrived all the same, and for as intertwined as Reigns and Rollins have been since 2020, Ambrose would have very much been in that mix as well.

A full-fledged feud with Reigns over the Universal Championship would have elevated Ambrose to the main event scene, albeit temporarily. After that was over (and Ambrose undoubtedly would have lost those wars), he would have been back to pulling midcard duty.

Sticking around solely so he could be involved in the excessive Shield and Bloodline lore wouldn't have been worth it.

The Matches We Missed Out On

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Beyond the obvious rematch with Reigns (they only ever went one-on-one at Survivor Series 2015), Ambrose would have a very limited number of fresh faces to work with in the years following his hypothetical contract extension.

Cody Rhodes is perhaps the most notable name, though they crossed paths fairly frequently in the final months of 2013 while the Rhodes family was feuding with The Shield and The Authority. Ambrose and Rhodes were both on the AEW roster from 2019 through early 2022 but never did battle during that time.

Although a formal feud eluded Ambrose and Drew McIntyre, they did have a few matches against each other on Raw between 2018 and 2019. Due to the vast amount of releases post-pandemic, the roster was light on star power, so there weren't too many people remaining on the roster that Ambrose didn't already face off against.

Even familiar faces who returned years later, such as Edge and CM Punk, Ambrose has had matches with in AEW. Bron Breakker, Oba Femi, Je'Von Evans and others currently dominate the WWE landscape, but with where Ambrose was positioned on the card, most of those matches may have been booked as squashes and not in Ambrose's favor.

Would Other WWE Top Talents Have Also Stayed Put?

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Dean Ambrose's WWE exit was also significant at the onset of 2019 because it marked one of the first major departures from the company in some time, at least at that level.

With this being right around when AEW launched, there weren't many places for talent to go to and make as much money or be as successful. CM Punk previously walked out in 2014 but retired from wrestling all together until 2014, while guys like Dolph Ziggler re-signed for lucrative contracts even if meant consistent creative satisfaction wasn't guaranteed.

It's worth noting that Ambrose's WWE contract simply expired, so he wasn't bound to a non-compete clause and didn't have to negotiate for an early release. Despite that, many Superstars went on to publicly request their releases but were denied because of the threat AEW was now posing.

Creatively, WWE was in a pretty poor state in 2019, so some stars were going to leave regardless, but Ambrose's situation definitely encouraged others to follow in his footsteps and journey into the unknown, even without AEW not being completely established at that point.

A world-renowned name himself, Chris Jericho's signing gave AEW instant credibility, but Ambrose a.k.a. Jon Moxley was a much hotter commodity when it put pen to paper with the promotion. His success in AEW had to have played a role in the illustrious likes of Punk and Bryan Danielson giving it a shot just two years later.

Why AEW Needed Jon Moxley

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AEW was built around The Elite from the get-go, but they needed to fill out their roster with other established stars from across the wrestling world to send the message that they were the real deal.

A world-renowned name himself, Chris Jericho's signing gave AEW instant credibility. One of the best decisions the company made early on was making him the inaugural world champ, and Jericho being on board was arguably the difference maker in landing AEW a television deal despite the promotion being unproven.

Dean Ambrose, now rechristened as Jon Moxley, was a much hotter commodity when he put pen to paper with the promotion in May 2019. Jericho held the top title before anyone else, but that was so Moxley could gradually be built up to beat him in February 2020.

As previously noted, Moxley was the man AEW depended on more than anyone when the world went into lockdown due to the pandemic that year. He ruled Dynamite as AEW World champ with pride and constantly stepped up in situations when wrestlers went down to injury in the years that followed.

His success in AEW had to have played a role in the illustrious likes of Punk and Bryan Danielson giving it a shot in the summer of 2021. AEW would have eventually excelled regardless, but they found their footing much quicker thanks to Moxley being in the right place at the right time.

Moxley Was Always Destined for AEW

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Jon Moxley was the focal point of AEW's main event scene for the first two years, and from there, he further expanded into New Japan Pro-Wrestling and later formed Blackpool Combat Club with Bryan Danielson and William Regal.

In other words, Moxley was and still is consistently involved in something of note. That wouldn't at all have been the case had he not left WWE in 2019.

Even had his run not ended then, Moxley was always destined for AEW, simply based on his booking, style, WWE's limitations and the landscape in general. It's possible he would have stayed with WWE for the full five years after re-signing or been released sooner if the company didn't feel he was worth what they were paying him.

AEW was organically going to gain steam with or without Moxley and their surge in popularity was undeniably going to appeal to someone like him, especially if his role in WWE stayed stagnant. He would have ended up in the same spot at some point, but it was way more beneficial for him, AEW and wrestling as a whole for his career resurgence to happen when it did.

Whether he'll ever resurface in WWE is anyone's guess, but if the outstanding in-ring year he's had and the latest AEW World Championship opportunity he has coming up at All Out are any indications, there really is no reason for him to call anywhere else but AEW home.

Graham Mirmina, aka Graham "GSM" Matthews, has specialized in sports and entertainment writing since 2010. Visit his website, WrestleRant, and subscribe to his YouTube channel for more wrestling-related content.