Jon Moxley Stopped Doing The Original Dirty Deeds Because Randy Orton Was Too Tall
The Death Rider, the Paradigm Shift, the Dirty Deeds….
“To me it’s a fucking DDT,” Jon Moxley said emphatically, speaking to Fightful ahead of AEW Dynamite in Cleveland.
“Depending on who wants to copyright what in what company or whatever, it can’t ever be Dirty Deeds anymore, obviously,” he said, referring to the fact that his finishing maneuver in WWE was named “Dirty Deeds.” Since then, he’s taken it all over the world, and expanded on it. It’s helped make for some amazing moment.
The move, which to him is a simple DDT has went way beyond that. For years it was a definitive finisher for the likes of Jake Roberts and Raven, but was used in a plethora of transitional spots in more recent times. Moxley changed that, at least for him.
“It happened naturally. I started doing that super DDT, the Death Rider or whatever you want to call it…To me the big one is the special one. Juice Robinson invented that in a match with him. It’s all natural ‘cause my mind is so like free flowing and there’s no kind of limits on me right now. So, if I can do it off the top rope, I’m likely to just do it off the top rope or through two tables in the Tokyo Dome or whatever or through a glass table. All these things just come naturally, you know? I can do different stuff for a finish. I can work more submissions. I can just let my mind go and do whatever it wants to do, and just see what happens,” Moxley said.
The DDT wasn’t always Mox’s go to. During his initial WWE run as Dean Ambrose, Moxley used a move that many now know as the “One Percenter” – a headlock driver that sends opponents crashing face first into the mat. Curious minds have wanted to know
The answer? Blame Randy Orton, or his height, ast least
“The Headlock Driver’s awesome if you’ve got the right guy doing it to the right guy. It can be like the nastiest, coolest piledriver looking thing in the world or if the guy’s taller than you, which so many of the guys in the WWE were taller than me, it can be just really awkward and stupid looking. I think I gave it to Randy Orton one time, who is someone with a significant height advantage on me, it just was awkward. I was like, “That’s it, I’m switching this up.” It was [Joey Mercury’s idea, actually,] to switch to the double arm DDT and I’d never really done that before. I really kind of perfected the timing and the snap and now I can do it in my sleep. One of the better looking ones I think you’ll see,” Mox said.
You can see our full interview with Jon Moxley at the top of the page. He’s scheduled to face AEW World Champion Chris Jericho for the title at AEW Revolution, February 29 on PPV from Chicago, Illinois. You can see him weekly on All Elite Wrestling Dynamite, 8 PM EST, Wednesdays on TNT.
