Daniel Garcia credited Jon Moxley with pulling AEW out of a period when the company had lost ground with its audience.
Speaking on Thrive with Alex Sagot, the Death Riders member and former TNT Champion said the promotion had drifted from what first drew fans to it.
“We’re all under the same pretense that we are sacrificing for the company. AEW, I would say like a year ago, or two years ago, was in an interesting spot where I feel like it lost a lot of goodwill with the fans. A lot of the fans didn’t really feel like it was the AEW that first belonged to them,” Garcia said.
“AEW was brought into the wrestling world as an alternative, as something to be different from WWE. I feel like AEW got to a place where the fans felt like we weren’t really an alternative anymore. We were just kind of falling into the same patterns that other wrestling companies have fallen into. Mox, in my opinion, turned the ship around.”
“He really decided that he needed to take control and turn the ship around, and he did exactly that. AEW is in a much better place right now than it was a year ago.”
Garcia said on the same podcast that Moxley attends every AEW event.
“He is somebody who is all about self-sacrifice, about dying to yourself. He is just a great representation of that, putting other people first before yourself. I look up to him so much when it comes to that stuff, and I try to emulate myself after him in a wrestling sense in a lot of ways,” Garcia said.
Moxley is the current AEW Continental Champion. Garcia is part of the Death Riders alongside Wheeler Yuta, PAC, Claudio Castagnoli, and Marina Shafir.