As noted before, Jon Moxley suffered a concussion injury at this past Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite Grand Slam 2023 show at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York. Moxley suffered the injury very early into his match against Rey Fenix for the AEW International Championship.
Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that while Moxley had suffered a mild concussion, nobody was aware that he had been concussed due to him being able to work through the injury.
Meltzer reported that his sources stated that as the match progressed, Moxley started to realize he was messed up more than he had thought since he stared to get lost over planned spots. While Moxley reportedly did not know how serious his injury was at the time, he knew it was bad enough to call an audible for the match’s finish and told Fenix to finish him off so that Fenix could go over. Meltzer reported that this was the reason why referee Rick Knox did not call the three count for the initial pinfall since he was not told of the audible that was made on the spot. Moxley reportedly then told of the new finish which led to Knox calling for the three count after Fenix hit him again with another Fenix Driver.
In regards to the backstage reaction, those spoken to reportedly stated that Fenix received heat from others backstage over their belief that he had hurt Moxley from his finisher when the opposite was actually true.
In regards to Moxley’s injury, Meltzer reported that Moxley could be out of action anywhere between a week for a best case scenario to a much longer time for a worst case scenario depending on him passing concussion protocol tests.
Moxley reportedly told others afterwards that due to him not being knocked out and was able to still wrestle, this was the reason why Fenix nor Knox nor even AEW doctors realized that he was actually hurt.