Jon Moxley Says He Planned To Confront Josh Barnett At A Bellator Event To Hype Match Between The Two
Jon Moxley loves to create buzz in unique ways to hype up his moves in professional wrestling. Moxley self-financed a short film clip that revealed he was returning to his Moxley name upon leaving the WWE and according to him, Moxley almost paid a visit to Bellator.
Speaking to his wife Renee Paquette on her Oral Sessions podcast, Moxley said he and Josh Barnett were talking about the idea of confronting him at a Bellator event back in December. The two were scheduled to face one another on the Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport show for GCW and they were going to take advantage of this to hype up their upcoming match. All of this was provided Barnett was victorious in his match.
“We were going to go to Honolulu, for a vacation, and it just so happened that Josh was fighting in Bellator. We were going to have dinner with Josh the night before and everything was fine. At this point, I’m scheduled to wrestle Josh at Bloodsport in April. This is December. This is an advantageous opportunity to get some press behind this thing. Josh is like, ‘After the match, I’ll do a promo. You jump in the cage, we do our business and promote Bloodsport. We’ll make sure everyone is aware and you don’t get arrested.’ I was assuming (he would win). The details weren’t clear, but I wasn’t going to be a wuss. If I said I was going to follow through, I would follow through, even if I got arrested. I was set to jump in the cage at Bellator and start talking shit. Security or cops be damned. I was just hoping the whole Bellator locker room didn’t empty and beat the fuck out of me.”
The whole thing wound up never coming to fruition. Barnett had to pull out of his fight on the day of the event due to a severe illness, and their match in April was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the second time a match between the two was canceled, as Moxley had to pull from a September 2019 match after Moxley had a staph infection. Moxley wound up facing, and defeating, Chris Dickinson at the Bloodsport event that was eventually held in October.
h/t to Fightful for the quote
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