Real Reason Death Riders Didn’t Turn on Jon Moxley in AEW Revealed

Jon Moxley isn’t letting the Death Riders storyline play out the way many expected, and a new report reveals he personally rejected any possibility of a breakup.

While fans have been expecting cracks in the Death Riders for months, especially with repeated teases of a possible split, that direction was never going to happen, and Moxley himself is the reason why. During a Self Made session, Self Made Pro revealed that Moxley outright rejected the idea of the Death Riders turning on him. According to the discussion, he shut it down internally and made it clear he wasn’t interested in going down that route.

“That is what Jon was telling people. I was told that Jon straight up told the talent, ‘No, that’s WWE stuff.’ So that was why I said, when people were expecting the whole Jon-gets-kicked-out-and-turns-babyface thing, I was like—Jon has a different wrestling mind.”

That decision explains why the expected betrayal angle never materialized, even as speculation picked up over the past several months. Instead of breaking apart, the Death Riders have continued to move forward as a unit and are currently locked into a feud with Will Ospreay and the United Empire.

This lines up with how Moxley has positioned himself in All Elite Wrestling over the past year. Back in December 2025 at AEW Worlds End 2025, after defeating Kazuchika Okada to win the Continental Classic, Moxley cut a promo that framed AEW as something bigger than individual storylines or standard wrestling tropes.

“To hell with all of this congratulations and s*** . This belt is here — it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to everybody in this tournament that busted their ass, gave everything they had every night. It belongs to the people, to the fans who support pro wrestling with their goddamn hard-earned money. We owe it to them to give them everything we have. There’s no other organization in wrestling like AEW. We are the elite of the elite. And we give it one hundred goddamn percent every damn day.”

At the time, Dave Meltzer noted on Wrestling Observer Radio that the promo reflected a broader effort by AEW to reset its direction after a very rough stretch.

“They’re probably a year late on this. They really should have done this a year ago. But they are doing a tremendous job of essentially trying to reverse that negativity that really plagued them badly in late 2023 and throughout a lot of 2024.”

Now, with this development, it’s clear Moxley’s influence isn’t just showing up in promos, it’s shaping creative decisions behind the scenes as well. Rather than leaning into a familiar breakup angle, he’s keeping the Death Riders intact and pushing forward with a different approach, one that avoids predictable faction betrayals.

Do you think Jon Moxley made the right call keeping the Death Riders together, or would a breakup storyline have been the better move?

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