Jon Moxley has revealed that he was afraid for his life before enrolling in a program for alcohol abuse in 2021.
In November 2021, Moxley left the ring to undergo medical attention. He returned to AEW TV in January after finishing rehab before joining Bryan Danielson in a plan that would eventually lead to the creation of the Blackpool Combat Club.
Speaking with Matt Koesters for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Moxley noted that he was scared that he’d die in the ring unless he got help.
“Over a year ago, I was afraid of dying of a seizure in the ring. I had that on my mind every day. It was all (messed) up, and going through an absolute personal hell for a long time that nobody else even knew about.
“When you’re scared for your actual life, to make the decision to go to rehab and (stuff) was basically – I had to basically assume I’m giving everything away. I was like, OK, I’m either going to live a long, happy life and raise my kid and be a person, or I can wrestle. But I can’t have both.
“When I got out (of treatment), it turned out that nobody was mad at me at all. Everybody was very happy. I was welcomed back by AEW and by the fans, and it was just like, go and get back to it. And when you’ve already lost everything, all you fear for is your life, literally and figuratively.
“If I had taken another step in the wrong direction, I could have been on the verge of losing my family if I had gone that way. If I had kept going in another direction, I could have died on live television. I could have literally lost everything.
“So to make that choice, I had to completely give away everything. I’ll never wrestle in this arena again, I’ll never get to wrestle in front of these fans again, I’ll never get to be on TV again, I’ll never win a championship again, I’ll never make any money again, I’ll go back and get my old job at the arena – I don’t know. I had to give it all away.
Moxley, who is the current AEW World Champion and will defend his gold against MJF at the November 19 Full Gear pay-per-view, continued on by discussing his decision to get help.
“The simple short way to put is that you get to a certain point you’ve got a problem you can’t fix yourself. If your plumbing is backed up, you call a plumber. If your transmission is shot, you call a mechanic. At a certain point, when things are beyond your own control, you’ve got to call a professional and do a job that’s much more expedient, efficient and thorough than you can do yourself.
“It’s definitely the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m the kind of guy that wants to fix everything myself, and isn’t going to ask for help, necessarily, and obviously that’s a kind of embarrassing thing, y’know. That’s the main reason probably that a lot of people hesitate to do a thing like that because it’s a sign of weakness or it’s embarrassing.
“It’s whatever. It’s a lot quicker. It saves you a whole hell of a lot of trouble to deal with it head-on. But you’ve got to kind of get to that point, though, because you can try everything on your own first. The cliche is you’ve got to hit rock bottom or whatever.
“Maybe instead of going through a year of hell, maybe I’ll bite this in the bud right now, and that would be cool.”
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