Jon Moxley is set to light up the big screen in Cagefighter: Worlds Collide and it?s largely due to Christian.
In the film, Moxley portrays a pro wrestling star named Randy Stone who will participate in a cross-promotional battle with a top-ranked MMA fighter. The film also includes former UFC champion Chuck Liddell, Luke Rockhold, and former WWE World Champion Jay ?Christian? Reso.
Speaking with Uproxx, Jon Moxley detailed how his friendship with Christian landed him the role in the film.
?It actually was pretty fortunate for me. I got a call from Jay Reso, who wrestling fans know as Christian. He was working as an executive producer on the movie. It was very shortly after I had left the previous place, WWE, and was a free agent, and he said they were looking for somebody who was a recognizable pro wrestler who?s available and I had just happened to become available,? said MOX. ?It seemed like such spooky timing that I almost immediately just said, ?Yeah, I?m probably in. Just send me the script and let me take a look at it.? From being friends with Christian I knew that he wouldn?t be involved in some real crappy movie, so I just said, ?Let?s go? and pretty much jumped in right away. It?s a movie about kind of all my interests, all kind of rolled into one, and a good story about overcoming adversity and so forth, and a chance to play a hate-able antagonist who gets defeated and it sounded like fun.?
When asked if there were any similarities between his character in the film and his wrestling persona, Jon Moxley said that Randy Stone shared some similarities to the MOX fans see on TV but Randy would be an antagonist. Christian even helped here, advising that Moxley's lines not be scripted, allowing him to ad-lib which is a specialty of professional wrestlers.
?It?s probably sort of similar except that in this movie I?m playing the antagonist, so to speak, the bad guy, so you want to be a little hate-able. You want to be a little full of yourself, pompous, whatever it is,? said the AEW World Champion. ?Kind of bring a little bit of that quality that Chris Jericho has perfected over the years? He just says something that just makes you want to punch him right in the nose. That?s what I had to bring to this role. A fun part about it was that Christian, before the movie even started, told them ? because a lot of the lines in this movie obviously are me doing pro wrestling style interviews or, you know, trash-talking and hyping this fight at a press conference or whatever ? he told them, ?Maybe not so much script him. Maybe let him ad-lib a lot of that stuff because that?s kind of what he does for a living so he?s probably better at it than you?d be at writing it for him.?
He continued, "we had a big press conference scene that was one of the funnest things I?ve ever done because it was just an hour of me sitting up on this podium and yelling and screaming profanities and calling this man every name in the world and just saying whatever came to my mind and just going off and ad-libbing. I got to ad-lib ninety-something percent of everything I say in this movie, and they gave me the freedom to do that. So hopefully the way I come across in this movie makes everybody wants to get up off the couch and come punch me in the face."
The film is set to debut on FITE TV on Saturday, May 16, 2020. Learn more at this link.