Wrestling / Jon Moxley

The Lunatic Fringe.
The Blue-Eyed Battler.
The Death Rider.
MOX.

"This is what you call a Paradigm Shift."

Jonathan David Good (born December 7, 1985) is an American professional wrestler best known for his eight-year run at WWE. As the psychotic heel Jon Moxley, he has participated in multiple indie promotions, perhaps most prominently in WCW's former farm league Heartland Wrestling Association, Insanity Pro Wrestling, CZW, Dragon Gate USA, Game Changer Wrestling, and as of 2019, All Elite Wrestling.

He signed a developmental contract with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2011, and was assigned to Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW), WWE's developmental promotion, with the new ring name Dean Ambrose. The next year, he debuted on WWE's main roster alongside Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins as part of the villainous stable The Shield at that year's Survivor Series. The group—Ambrose included—turned face in March 2014, only for Rollins to betray and attack them that June.

Outraged by his teammate's treachery, Ambrose began a deeply personal feud with his former Shield partner. During his tenure there, he became a one-time United States Champion, with his 351-day reign being the third-longest in history and the longest within WWE (who acquired the title in 2001), a three-time Intercontinental Champion, the 2016 Money in the Bank winner, a one-time WWE Champion, and a two-time Raw Tag Team Champion (with Seth Rollins). He is the youngest Grand Slam Champion at 31 years 8 months old, edging out The Miz by one month!

Ambrose would depart WWE in April 2019 following Creative Differences, making him the most sought-after free agent in wrestling until signing a deal with All Elite Wrestling the next month. He made his AEW debut under his pre-WWE ring name Jon Moxley at the company's inaugural event Double or Nothing, laying waste to Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega. Shortly thereafter, he made his first New Japan Pro-Wrestling appearance a memorable one, winning the IWGP US Championship in his first match with the promotion. Moxley's first AEW contract, which expired in 2022, allowed him to work international and indy shows that don't conflict with AEW, as well as with AEW partner promotions. He then worked on a "handshake deal" for a few months while he and CEO Tony Khan were negotiating a new contract. That October, AEW announced Mox had signed a new 5-year deal that will see him not only wrestle, but serve as a coach and mentor. It was initially thought that the new contract made him exclusive to AEW and its international partners (currently AAA, CMLW, DDT, and NJPW), but Mox clarified that he's still allowed to take a small number of indy bookings.

At AEW's Revolution 2020, Moxley defeated Chris Jericho to become AEW World Champion, dropping the belt in December of that year to Omega. More recently, he defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi at the AEW–NJPW Forbidden Door supershow in June 2022 to become AEW Interim World Champion. Mox would face and defeat returning World Champion CM Punk in a unification match on the August 24, 2022 episode of Dynamite, making him the first two-time AEW World Champion. He's since claimed that belt a third time, defeating Bryan Danielson in the final of a tournament for the vacated championship on September 21 at the Grand Slam special episode of Dynamite.^note The title was vacated after Punk, who had won the title from Mox at All Out on September 4, was suspended due to his involvement in a legitimate backstage fight after the event. Said fight stemmed from Punk's shoot comments on Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks at a post-event media scrum. Mox also won the GCW World Championship from Matt Cardona on September 4, 2021, holding that belt for more than a year until dropping it to Nick Gage the day after his new AEW deal was announced. In 2023, Mox would become AEW International Champion by defeating Orange Cassidy at All Out on September 3, 2023. He lost that belt to Rey Fénix on September 20 at Grand Slam after suffering a concussion during the match. At NJPW Windy City Riot on April 12, 2024 he defeated Tetsuya Naito to win the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, becoming the first wrestler to win the world championships in WWE, AEW and NJPW.

One of the most decorated wrestlers of the modern era, across his entire career, Mox has held 33 championship wins across 11 different promotions, both major and indie, including being a 1x WWE World Champion, 3x AEW World Champion, 1x IWGP World Heavyweight Champion, 2x CZW World Heavyweight Champion, 1x GCW World Champion 3x WWE Intercontinental Champion, 1x WWE US Champion, 1x AEW International Champion, 2x IWGP US Heavyweight Champion and 2x WWE RAW Tag Team Champion.

As well as being known for his membership in The Shield, he is also one of the core members of the Blackpool Combat Club.

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Mox Tropes:

In General

• Action Dad: On November 18, 2020, Jon casually revealed in a middle of a promo that his wife Renee was pregnant. Their daughter Nora was born in June 2021.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Even during his runs as a face, he fits the archetypal "bad boy" role well enough, and it no doubt played a large in his popularity with the female demographic.
• Anti-Hero: Probably the standout example in wrestling for the 2010's. A self-aware anti-hero on top of that. He's called himself a "scumbag" in face promos, and is a Combat Pragmatist of the highest order. Take away all of that, and he still wouldn't be a straight hero because he's not sane enough. And yes, he's self-aware about that too.
• Arch-Enemy: Ambrose/Moxley seems to have an issue with Bullet Club members no matter where he goes, having already feuded with AJ Styles in WWE, Kenny Omega (and by extension, the Young Bucks and Good Brothers) and "Hangman" Adam Page in AEW and Kenta Kobayashi in NJPW and AEW. He also suffered his first pinfall loss in NJPW at the hands of Jay White.
• Ax-Crazy: Either as Jon Moxley in AEW, NJPW, or the indies, or as Dean Ambrose on FCW/WWE.
• Badass Boast : Watch any Moxley's or Ambrose's promos, chances are, either he will deliver one of these or just make an entire segment out of it.
• Blood Knight: Fits this either as Ambrose or Moxley, but is much more open about it as the latter. Especially after leaving WWE, where he's picking fights with people like Minoru Suzuki and Lance Archer.
  Jim Ross: Some men were just born for conflict.
• Boring, but Practical: His submission hold, the Bulldog choke, is just Moxley putting his arm around his opponents neck. However, despite not very impressive looking, the move is one of the most effective holds in MMA and considering that the one doing it is a guy like Moxley... it is very effective.
• Breakout Character: While all three members are popular in their own ways, Ambrose had been treated as the odd one out. Following the Shield break-up in 2014, Roman (Vince's McMahon's favourite), the one who was chosen to be the next face of the company, was not well-liked by fans while Seth (Triple H's favourite), the traitorous member, was more popular than Roman despite being the heel. Ambrose, on the other hand, was the only one who was both a babyface that was well-liked with an interesting gimmick and capable of putting on interesting matches that made him the most popular of the trio, and fans wanted him to be the one to become the main star. Unfortunately, the creative team was dead certain to make Roman the next John Cena, forcing Dean to be in the mid-card fighting meaningless feuds and even when he won the WWE Championship, he only held it for three months before losing both the title and his main event status. After years of being Demoted to Extra, Dean left WWE and returned to his Jon Moxley character and became AEW's top star, rivaled only by Kenny Omega, who has been considered one of the best wrestlers in the modern era (and later by MJF, often viewed as the best of the younger generation of wrestlers). In comparison to the other two, Dean/Jon has earned five five-star matches by Dave Meltzer while Seth only has one and Roman has none.
• The Bus Came Back: He made a surprise cameo in a March 2020 episode of WWE Backstage when he crashed his wife Renee Young doing a video call to Booker T and Xavier Woods. This marked his first appearance in WWE television since his departure in April the previous year.
• The Cameo: He makes one in a March 2020 episode of WWE Backstage by appearing in Renee Young's screen due to him chasing their pet dog.
• Disappeared Dad: Brought up by Bray Wyatt during their first feud in WWE.^note  According to him Ambrose's father's been in jail since Ambrose was a kid. He also implied his mother drowned herself. Also mentioned funnily enough by Brodie Lee upon their first confrontation in AEW.
  Brodie Lee: I don't know what you are. Or if you're just a scared little fatherless boy from Cincinnati!
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In his WWE days, he made Bray Wyatt suffered a Villainous Breakdown and made Brock Lesnar staggered with a low blow. He also gave Minoru Suzuki two deathriders, before eventually defeating him.
• Finishing Move: In his early WWE career, he used a headlock driver called Dirty Deeds, later changed to a snap double arm DDT. In his first match as Moxley post-WWE, he debuted an even more brutal lifting version of the Dirty Deeds called the Death Rider. He also uses both Dirty Deeds and Death Rider interchangeably in AEW... both under the same new name, being called the Paradigm Shift.
  • After leaving WWE, he also started to use various submission holds to win matches, with the Bulldog Choke being the most commonly used among them.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: From enduring hell growing up like being picked on, forced to sell drugs, ostracized, and not to mention watching his own mother being abused, into becoming one of the most famous and successful wrestling names in the world today. Needless to say, Mr. Good deserves every bit of it.
• Foil: Can be seen as this to CM Punk if you think about it. Both were hugely popular during their peak times in WWE only to be bogged down by bad booking and exhausting schedules eventually causing them to leave the company. With Punk walking out after one bad creative decision too many and Moxley/Ambrose leaving once his contract ran out. And both went on podcasts after they left the company to discuss their grievances publicly. But the difference between them is Punk let his experience taint his overall love for wrestling and didn't step foot in a ring for seven years. Mox/Ambrose made it clear his grievances were mostly creative and that he still loved wrestling and debuted in a new company not 2 months later and continues wrestling. Even going to New Japan Pro-Wrestling and competing in the G1 Climax that same year which is more grueling than the usual WWE schedule.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: The one thing that's consistent about his erratic personality is that he's liable to snap at a moment's notice.
• Happily Married: In 2017 to Renee Young.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: He seems to favor leather jackets, as shown by many segments both as Jon Moxley and Dean Ambrose.
• Hidden Depths: Despite his passion for wrestling, Moxley had shown that he is a great actor, having played both a hero and a villain in separate movies, and got praised in both of them for his acting.
• History Repeats: Ambrose/Moxley lost his first WWE and AEW world championships to former leaders of the Bullet Club.
  • He also lost both titles in a non-clean fashion (being low blowed by Styles and hit with a microphone by Omega) and in wrestling events held in a -ber month and on years divisible by 4 (The former is on Backlash, a WWE PPV held in September 2016 and the latter is on Winter Is Coming, an AEW Dynamite special episode held in December 2020).
• Important Haircut: Upon returning to WWE in 2018 after recovering from injury, he possessed a full beard and a much shorter haircut, which he kept after he returned to being Jon Moxley.
• Jack of All Stats: Compared to his Shield breathren, he has solid strength, speed and toughness but, for better or worse, doesn't stick out as extraordinary in any one area... unless you're counting bat-shit insanity as a stat. He also possesses submission skills, even before he expanded them post-WWE. Having an effective submission game doesn't require much power nor speed.
• Manly Man: The guy is a hardcore badass with a lot of hardcore matches, incredible in ring skills, an awesome talker on the mic, and also very popular with the ladies.
• Meaningful Name: Jonathan Good is, despite being rough around the edges, ultimately a good man. Post-Shield, Dean/Jon has spent most of his career as a babyface while the other two have become WWE's top heels.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Dean/Jon is arguably the most popular member of the Shield with teenage girls, if not women in general. While he isn't a Pretty Boy like Seth or a conventionally handsome Hunk like Roman, he is good-looking in his own right and his charisma combined with the "bad boy" vibe he gives off gives him more sex appeal than both. Seth actually once got on the microphone and gender-flipped Sable's Catchphrase to describe Dean Ambrose as a way of getting Cheap Heat in the middle of an Ambrose match.
  • He was actually promoted this way for years. That's right, the self-important braggart prone to pulling his hair and scratching at invisible objects is totally accessible! Astonishingly it often worked.
• One Degree of Separation: He, as Jon Moxley, and Seth, as Tyler Black, have wrestled and/or tagged with a lot of the same people. Perhaps their strongest connection is Jimmy Jacobs, who Mox had a major feud with that ended in a "I Quit" match, and who Black used to be best friends with in Wrestling Society X and the Age of the Fall up until their relationship degenerated. In spite of all that, and although Good and Lopez had probably met prior before, the two hadn't wrestled each other or worked together until they met up in FCW. There, they soon found out they were "wrestling soulmates". (Incidentally, Jacobs would later work for WWE for a while as a writer.)
• The Reliable One: In WWE Dean Ambrose was seen as a dependable upper-midcard workhorse. Even more so in AEW where it's joked that any time something goes wrong, Mox defers his long-overdue vacation by another few months to put the company on his back again.
  Reddit comment: AEW emergency instructions: In case of fire, break glass, then get Mox to slam someone on it.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: His character towards the end of his WWE run and expressed on screen in AEW as Jon Moxley. He didn't even look at the new WWE contract he was offered before leaving.
  • He expressed this toward the end of his final sit down interview with The Shield...
  Ambrose: Eight years ago, I walked into this casino. Now I'm cashing my chips and I'm walking away from the table. I won the game. And what I do with the rest of my life, from hereon out, is my business. I answer to no one. This time the million dollar man didn't get what he wanted, cause I can't be bought.
  • ...and said it directly to Chris Jericho when he attempted to recruit him into the Inner Circle.
  Moxley: I didn't come to AEW because someone backed a truck full of money up to my house. I CAN’T BE BOUGHT.
• Self-Made Man: From growing up poor in the cruel streets of Cincinnati to becoming one of the most popular and badass wrestlers the world has ever known.
• Socially Awkward Hero: As a face, and definitely in Real Life, he qualifies, whether he's rambling, being oddly quiet, or (as Dean Ambrose) insulting Canadians to Sami Zayn's face.
• Token Good Teammate: Pun not intended. Both Rollins and Reigns have become the Big Bad of the company at one point after the Shield's dissolution. Ambrose however had been mostly a babyface throughout his singles run, with only a short heel run that was easily forgotten and a Big Bad Wannabe at best and another which barely lasted half a year. Even after leaving WWE he continued being a babyface in the other promotions while the other two would become the company's top villains. In fact, Ambrose/Moxley is the only member of the Shield who hasn't win Pro Wrestling Illustrated's "Most Hated Wrestler of the Year" award ^note  However, Reigns won it in 2016 as a face due to poor fan reception, further cementing his status. That also explains why both underwent Sanity Slippage after he left; as the "emotional bedrock" of the stable, he was serving as their Morality Chain, so when he was gone, there was no one to stop either of them from going off the deep end.
• True Companions: Played wonderfully straight throughout the end of 2013 and into 2014. There was so much tension between Ambrose and Reigns that just about any other team/stable in WWE history would have long since imploded on itself — it seemed painfully obvious that WWE's creative team was setting up a team-wide split (possibly to turn Roman Reigns face and give him a push). Seth Rollins, being the manipulative chessmaster that he is, gave the two something to confront as one when he walked out on them, then used the situation to convince them to put aside their issues, resulting in The Shield becoming stronger than ever and making a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Sadly, after making it perfectly clear that The Shield were Evolution's superiors, Rollins stabbed Reigns and Ambrose in the back and would go on to claim that the brotherhood he presented the Shield as was just a lie that they believed in; to him they were nothing but business partners. However, once again the two responded only by banding closer together, and while they may have decided to split up and operate on their own, they still remain brothers and are after the same targets.
  • Years after the breakup, Rollins turned face, and, having regretted his actions, tried to make amends with Ambrose. Ambrose was not receptive to the idea at first, but on some level he still saw Rollins as this, enough that he started to flip-flop over it. On Rollins' part, he was sincere in his efforts and desperate enough to win Ambrose's forgiveness that he was willing to take a steel chair to the back for it, which Ambrose ultimately couldn't go through with. After that, the reconciliation was inevitable. While Ambrose himself snapped from all the angst and issues he'd dealt with in WWE and turned on Rollins a year later, this time it took only a few months for him to come back to the fold one more time before leaving the company with The Shield's brotherhood intact.
  • Speaking of leaving WWE, if Jon Moxley's interview on Chris Jericho's podcast is any indication, this friendship goes beyond the screen and beyond the three men's ties to the company. While he'd already made the decision to leave and wrestle elsewhere months ago, the moment that sealed that decision for good was when Vince manipulated him into disrespecting Reigns' then-ongoing second bout with leukemia for heel heat one week after his Face–Heel Turn against Rollins, then tried to tell him to do it again but much worse the next week, which he refused. While Rollins and Reigns, or more to the point, Colby and Joe, both pleaded a few times with him to reconsider his departure, Jon was able to confirm that things were still good with them, as they understood why he did what he did, having been there with him and seen much of what troubled him with Vince's creative process.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Inverted. Mox/Ambrose is very protective of Renee. In one episode of Total Divas, a guy steals Renee's hat and Ambrose chases him throughout the city and nearly becomes violent even though Renee tells him it doesn't matter. He also doesn't take it lightly whenever someone disrespects her.
• Wild Card: He fits this to a T. Just read all the character related tropes.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Whenever his past—which is all legit, mind you—is brought up in storyline, both as Mox and Ambrose. The man grew up in low-income housing and was even homeless a few times. His mother worked as a prostitute—who was frequently abused by her clients—to put food on the table, while his father is in prison. He was forced to sell drugs in high school, had his baby cousin- actually his sister; he doesn't tend to mention her, for privacy- taken away from him by child protective services, and dropped out of high school at age sixteen to attend Les Thatcher's wrestling school. A wrestling school he couldn't legally attend until he was eighteen, so he paid his dues by cleaning up the building all by himself every night while observing the workers in the ring and practicing his promos to himself—a talent that ended up making him famous. And he's woven all of that seamlessly into his characters, using wrestling as a form of therapy, just like he said he did.

As Jon Moxley

• Aborted Arc: His run in the AEW World Title Eliminator Tournament came to an abrupt end when he took a hiatus from wrestling to enter an inpatient alcohol treatment program. Before his departure, he was clearly being set up as the tournament's Wrestling Monster, squashing 10 and displaying a level of brutality that put him on the edge of a Face–Heel Turn. The reports are that he was actually supposed to win against Bryan Danielson in the finals at Full Gear 2021, which would've cemented his heel turn and set him up to tear through the rest of the Dark Order on his way to "Hangman" Adam Page. Miro took his place in the tournament and filled a similar role as the heel who tore through the babyfaces on the way to the finals, but Danielson was ultimately given the win and the subsequent campaign through the Dark Order's members.
• The Ace: In AEW so far he's the one with the longest winning streak. For more than an entire year he was never defeated, and he did it not by beating no-name jobbers, but taking out the top wrestlers in the company like Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho, Brodie Lee, PAC, Sammy Guevara, Jake Hager, Brian Cage, Darby Allin, and MJF. And he managed to hold the top championship in All Elite Wrestling for 277 days, defeating all challengers without cheating or interference. For roughly the first two years of AEW's existence, the only wrestler who was able to defeat him was Kenny Omega in their first "official" match^note their first match against each other, which Moxley won, was a savage no-holds barred match which AEW refused to sanction, and even Omega ultimately had to cheat to overcome Moxley.
  • Not to mention in 2020, Mox became the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Wrestler of the Year as well as the number 1 pick of the PWI 500. This just cemented how great of a wrestler he is.
  • By 2022, he became the first person in AEW to hold the World Championship twice. And then three times as well.
  • And the next year became the first person to have held more than one of the company's men's singles belts, with the International Championship being the second.
• A God Am I: In a CZW promo just before a triple threat title match with Egotistico Fantastico and Nick Gage, he's a god of wrestling (not because he's champion, because he has a fanny pack and he's capable of getting away with wearing it).
• Alliterative Name: Known as "Moxley Moxx" when he was a part of International Wrestling Association's cruiserweight division and participated in the series for their hardcore title at the 2006 Christmas in Puerto Rico.
• Anti-Hero: Before becoming a full-blown heel in 2023, Moxley in AEW was technically a tweener rather than a face or a heel— he loves to fight and beat the crap out of people, gets off on inflicting pain, has no respect for anyone who hasn't actually earned it from him the hard way, and will do whatever he has to in order to win, but he's fearless, despises cowardice and cheating, and is basically a decent human being despite his mental damage. However, he's just way too over with the fans to really be a proper tweener. His first major feud in the company was a brutal one with the 100% face Kenny Omega based around Moxley simply wanting to make a name for himself by destroying the biggest target he could find, but the fans cheered for him just as much as (if not more than) Omega. The only time he's ever been booed is when he briefly pretended to join the Inner Circle— which only got them even more behind them when he revealed he was just kidding.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The first thing Moxley did upon debuting in AEW was attack Kenny Omega, and he continued to do so in subsequent weeks. It was clear that Moxley's main goal was to topple AEW's golden boy and to make an immediate name for himself. In response, Omega chastised Moxley for his insanity as well as his tenure at WWE, especially in the last few months. A match between them was initially scheduled at All-Out but was postponed due to Moxley suffering from MRSA staph infection. At Full Gear, the two fought in a brutal unsanctioned Lights Out match with Moxley coming out the victor. A year later, the feud continued with Omega ending Moxley's undefeated streak at Winter Is Coming to capture the AEW World Championship with the help of his long time friend, Don Callis. Furious over his loss via cheating (and remembering how it occurred the last time, in 2016 with AJ Styles), Moxley continued his feud with Omega into 2021, with Omega getting the help of his Bullet Club brethen (the Young Bucks, Good Brothers and Kenta) while Moxley also sought help from various allies. Fast forward another two years, Moxley and Omega, now on different alignments, would go to war with their respective factions.
  • Aside from Kenny Omega, Moxley also attacked Chris Jericho on his debut. Once Moxley's feud with Omega ended, he set his sights on Jericho, and the two even brought up their 2016 feud while they were in WWE. Jericho attempted to recruit Moxley into the Inner Circle, which Moxley pretended to join before admitting he was only lying and was aiming for Jericho's AEW World Championship. The feud was renewed in 2022 during Chris Jericho's feud with Eddie Kingston, with Moxley backing up his friend. Shots were fired when Chris Jericho also antagonized two of Moxley's proteges, Wheeler Yuta and Shota Umino, just to piss off Mox. As Interim AEW World Championship, Mox defended his title at Quake by the Lake and defeated Jericho once again despite everything the Lion Tamer threw at him.
  • During his first reign as AEW World Champion, Moxley was feuding with Taz for several months. Moxley made it personal when he broke the undefeated streak of Brian Cage (Taz's client). Now having both members of Team Taz after him, Moxley allied himself with Darby Allin, another man Team Taz was feuding with.
  • MJF first set his sights on Moxley in 2020 and challenges him for the AEW World Championship at All Out 2020, going as far as running a presidential election-style campaign. Tired of Friedman's speech and arrogance, Moxley attacked during one of his promo with the Paradigm Shift. In retaliation, during the contract signing between the two, Friedman added two stipulations; Moxley will not attack Friedman until their match and Moxley's Paradigm Shift is banned during their match, and further push Jon's buttons by mentioning his wife. Jon still manages to defeat Max during their match, ironically by using the banned move while the referee was distracted, and ending Max's undefeated streak. Their rivalry continue in 2022 when MJF won the Casino Poker Chip at All Out and challenges Mox for the AEW World Championship again at Full Gear. This time, MJF's hired guns, the Firm, invaded GCW Fight Club 2022, and cost Max the GCW World Championship, further escalating their feud. At Full Gear, MJF wins the title due to Mox's mentor William Regal betraying him.
  • Mox's feud with Adam Page is less about world titles or being the top dog of the company and is probably one of Jon's most personal rivals in AEW. When Page and Mox first fought for the AEW World Championship in an episode of Dynamite in October 2022, which saw Mox won after delivering a brutal lariat to Hangman. Said lariat also gave Hangman a concussion and he also claimed he couldn't remember his son's name. Taking this personally, Hangman attacks Moxley when he returns two months later and from then on, both men occasionally attacked one another. The feud continues for months with each of them scoring the victory over the other once, and even involving their respective teams (the BCC for Moxley and the Dark Order for Page). A Texas Death Match for scheduled between the two at Revolution 2023 where both men practically try to kill each other. In the end, Moxley is forced to submit when Page chokes him out with a chain wrapped around his neck and literally hanged him from the ropes. This however doesn't end the feud between them and in fact, only got Mox and the BCC to turn heel and become more violent. This forces Page to bury the hatchet with the Elite and reunite with them to go against a common enemy.
• Bash Brothers:
  • With Sami Callihan, especially in the German westside Xtreme wrestling promotion, where they were tag team champions.
  • With Eddie Kingston in AEW once they'd repaired their damaged friendship.
• Berserk Button: Never call him "a different type of cat." And don't make his match unsanctioned, because it'll just make him go even crazier to compensate for the match not officially counting.
  • Cowardice and bullying seem to be even bigger ones. Despite his brash, crude and violent nature, Moxley has his own morals and views people like Jericho and the Inner Circle with contempt.
• Blood Knight: Moxley loves to fight. No, we don't think you quite get it yet, Jon Moxley loves to fight!
• Bloodier and Gorier: His AEW incarnation is much more graphically violent than what he was in WWE, with Moxley being able to bleed profusely more often in matches, getting cut open or skewered in graphic ways, and being able to do the kind of violent things to opponents in death matches that he was never allowed to do in WWE.
• Boisterous Weakling/Big Bad Wannabe: He came into NEPW, of the Bone Krusher Academy fame, with the announcement he was going to "destroy everyone". Guess how well that worked out? Here's a hint, one of his first targets and his first opponent was half his size Tiny Tim and he still needed help from Cry Baby to pull it off.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Literally, his victory over Minoru Suzuki nearly cost him his right arm, why? because Minoru Suzuki place a chair around it and hits it with another chair.
• Call-Back:
  • Post-WWE, Moxley has taken to making his entrances through the crowd as in his days with the Shield.
  • His feud with Chris Jericho brought up their previous time in WWE such as Moxley ripping Jericho's jacket and the latter putting the former in the Walls of Jericho over thumbtacks inside a modified cage match.
• Combination Attack: Moxley and Eddie Kingston have the "Violent Crown" - a brutal combination of a lariat by Mox and a half-and-half suplex by Kingston.
• Cradling Your Kill: After finally crushing Darby Allin by choking him out, hitting him with a Gotch Piledriver and a Paradigm Shift before pinning him to retain the AEW Championship, Moxley pulled the unconscious Darby into his arms and whispered consolations into his ears.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Moxley crushed CM Punk in three minutes to become the undisputed AEW World Champion.
• Cut Short: He had to vacate the Full Impact Pro Heavyweight title, due to defenses conflicting with his new FCW schedule. He was the second longest title holder after Homicide at that point too.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Darby Allin was one of Moxley's first opponents during his open challenge after defeating Kenny Omega at Full Gear. He would also become one of Moxley's closest allies during his feud with Jericho and the Inner Circle and later again when both of them find a common enemy in Taz and Brian Cage. Moxley would also step in to help Darby should he be outnumbered in an attack, as would Darby if Mox was in a similar situation.
• Defeating the Undefeatable:
  • Him beating Jake Hager in a 30-minute match on Dynamite is this since Hager was up until that point unbeaten in AEW and in MMA. Since then he has also beaten previously undefeated wrestlers like Brodie Lee, Brian Cage and MJF.
  • This was finally visted on him after being completely undefeated for over a year when Kenny Omega finally upset him for the World Championship.
  • This also formed the basis for his feud against Bryan Danielson in AEW. Moxley acknowledged in his promos that both in the independent scene and WWE before AEW, he was never able to defeat Danielson cleanly in a one-on-one match and that Danielson always had his number back in the day.
• Determinator: Just might be the standout example in AEW at the moment. Beating challengers that other top AEW stars haven't been able to. Never backing down from a fight even when he's outnumbered or already injured. He's been able to defeat all challengers and their allies having never been pinned or submitted. Especially prevalent in his Revolution 2020 match against Jericho where shortly into it he was busted open above the eye and bleeding throughout the rest of the match. He was able to endure numerous cheap shots from an interfering Santana, Hager and Sammy Guevara who struck him with the championship title and still managed to defeat Jericho to become new AEW champ quickly afterwards.^note  he was also wearing an eye patch the entire time from a previous injury via the Inner Circle Moxley seems to have a definite knack for beating the odds.
  • This was also shown in his match againts NJPW veteran Minoru Suzuki. It is very clear from the beginning that 1) All of Moxley's attacks have little effect on Suzuki 2) All of Suzuki's attacks have a really painful effect on Moxley. Suzuki even very nearly broke Moxley's right arm. But again, this is Freaking Jon Moxley and staying down is not in his book. The Wrestling Observer that reviews the match sums it up very accurately, that Jon Moxley is just "too insane to die".
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: In the promo Moxley cut on young up-and-comer Darby Allin before their AEW Championship match on the 5th August 2020 episode of Dynamite, Moxley admitted that Darby was his favorite guy in AEW, partly because he reminded him of his younger self, but with the title on the line he'd still do whatever it took to retain it. And he really didn't want to be the man who ended Darby's career early, but he knew that Darby would never quit.
  Mox: Now I'm not gonna try and talk you out of anything. But I have to ask you please, please... when it's time to stay down, just. Stay. Down. Even though I know you're not gonna listen. Because I wouldn't.
• Eviler than Thou: So why was El Ilegal Chicano cheered in IWA? Part of it was not being a pair of arrogant, aggressive "anglos" (Hade Vansen was the only one from the UK but Mox sided with him so...)
• Everyone Has Standards: While Moxley does uses a lot of environment help and a brutal style of wrestling, he never resorts to cheating or cheap tactics. That is until his opponent tries it on him first, evident in his match with Toru Yano where Mox tries to used the tape on him after Yano does.
• Eye Scream: Was stabbed in the eye by Chris Jericho as revenge for declining to join the Inner Circle and hitting him over the head with a champagne bottle.
• Face–Heel Turn: Moxley has a lot of pent up frustration from the final months of 2022 to the beginning of spring in 2023. For starters, he's force to cancel his vacation plans due the CM Punk and Elite backstage alteration after All-Out 2022 which forced him to take up the AEW World Championship again, only to drop it to MJF a few months later at Full Gear 2022 due to Lord Regal's betrayal. Regal left the company a few weeks later and Jon never really settle his issue with him. To make things worse, Adam Page constantly harass Jon for giving him a legitimate concussion back in October. With so many things stressing him, Moxley turns heel for the first time in his post-WWE career in March 2023, after losing to Adam Page at Revolution with the rest of BCC, with their attacks on Hangman and the Dark Order becoming more aggressive.
• Fighting Your Friend: After the BCC turned heel in 2023, the group has had multiple encounters with Eddie Kingston who teams up with the factions they are feuding with. Most of the time, Jon and Eddie are hesistant to fight one another before they brawl. For most, Eddie's beef is with his longtime rival Claudio and has no issue with Jon, even telling Jon to stay out of his way for the sake of his wife and daughter.
• Foil: To his longtime rival Kenny Omega, the first wrestler ever to defeat him. Both of them are dominant singles wrestlers who are often portrayed as mentally unstable, but Mox is a loner who's known for his cold and taciturn personality, he generally shuns the limelight and enjoys fighting for the simple thrill of fighting, his gimmick plays up his background as a humble working-class street fighter, and he prides himself on fighting fair. By contrast: Kenny is backed by the Elite, he's known for his flamboyant and quirky public persona, he tends to relish the celebrity status that comes with his success in the ring (often letting it go to his head, which contributed to his heel turn), and he isn't afraid to use underhanded tactics.
• Game Changer: Pretty much the essence of his 'Paradigm Shift' promo. He himself is this as well for AEW being the first main event star in his prime to 'jump ship' from WWE to AEW and prove that you can be a star without being in the WWE.
• Genius Bruiser: Everyone dismisses Moxley as some brainless thug who only knows how to brawl. Moxley turns out is well versed in submission style wrestling as shown in his match with Brian Cage where he breaks down Cage's body with submission holds attacking the arms. He's also smart enough to read a contract signing before agreeing to it and also add stipulations of his own to it.
• Gimmick Matches: Lost the Insanity Pro Wrestling Heavyweight Title belt to Jimmy Jacobs in a Dog Collar match. Being a CZW Alumni, he's also been in Triple Threat "fans bring the weapons" matches and Ultra Violent three-ways. He defeated Brain Damage in a Dining Death match. There's also an infamous barbed-wire deathmatch in Germany between him and Sami Callihan that left a pair of huge scars on his shoulder from getting tangled in the wire.
• Good Is Not Dumb: While not a traditional babyface Moxley is closer to the hero side of the moral spectrum. He's shown a great deal of ring intelligence but also an abnormally clever awareness of his opponents since joining AEW. Especially since becoming champion. He's managed to not only outwrestle his opponents but outwit them as well. When facing Jericho he managed to bluff an eye injury for months until the reveal would be advantageous for him. It won him the championship at AEW Revolution.^note  He'd been fighting with an eyepatch for the entirety of their match and managed to withstand interference from Jericho's Inner Circle pals Hager, Santana & Ortiz only to be attacked with the title belt from Sammy Guevara and then thumbed in his good eye by Jericho. As Jericho's setting up the Judas Effect for what he thinks is a completely blinded Moxley Mox ducks the attack and then reveal's he's been healed for quiet sometime and had been waiting to exploit Jericho's tendency to underestimate his opponent due to superior numbers. He managed to defeat a much larger and stronger opponent in Brian Cage by relentlessly targeting his arm which Moxley knew had just recently been surgically repaired. He understood that if he couldn't beat Cage via pinfall or submission he could frighten Cage's manager Taz enough to throw in the towel rather than have his investment on the shelf again when he was locked into an armbar in the middle of the ring. He beat MJF who'd relentlessly proclaimed that he was a better in-ring performer than him in their match where the paradigm shift was banned because he realized MJF planned on cheating first ^note  MJF's muscle Wardlow had distracted the referee throwing MJF's diamond ring into the ring and when MJF scrambled to grab it to knock Moxley out Moxley caught him red handed. and beating him to the punch by giving him his finisher while the ref had his back turned. Before he was champion Moxley managed to defeat Kenny Omega in their Lights Out unsanctioned match by bringing Omega out of his comfort zone to a situation he's unfamiliar and into a match where Moxley had a clear advantage being more experienced in death matches. Moxley certainly knows how to not only defeat an opponent in the ring but beat them mentally as well.
• Good is Not Nice: Sure Moxley is abrasive and violent. He also never hesitates to say what on his mind and is known to turn on his tag team partner but he holds himself to a code of honor and absolutely despises bullies.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: He reasoned Team Chikara were just a bunch of fan pleasing performers who would fold the moment he started punching them, even Jigsaw and Hallowicked, but he singled out Mike Quackenbush, as only wanting to fight Moxley because he didn't want to look like a punk and expressed desire to know what Quackenbush's blood smelled like, figuring he would learn at the same time as Quackenbush himself.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: On the January 8, 2020 episode of Dynamite, Moxley smashed a bottle of "a little bit of the bubbly" over Chris Jericho's head after refusing his offer to join The Inner Circle.
• Hearing Voices: He used this—which he suffers with in Real Life—as a facet of his Moxley character.
• Heroic Spirit: While not a hero per se Mox definitely has this. He just won't stay down. Even when all seems lost, even when he's outnumbered, even when he only has one eye he just won't give up. Being undefeated in singles competition and holding AEW's top champion illustrates this.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Singing about CZW Cage Of Death with Tan Drake to Rich Swann's guitar, played like the joke that it was.
• Honor Before Reason: Going into Revolution 2021, Mox recognized that the Exploding Barbed Wire Death match was a trap laid for him by Kenny Omega but because of the way Omega had stolen the AEW World Championship from him he was honorbound to agree to the match so he could end Omega even if it meant the end of his career.
• I Lied: He pretended to join Chris Jericho's Inner Circle faction, even accepting the keys to a new car and boasting about how they as a group would take over AEW. He waited until Guevara and Hager left the ring before telling Jericho he was lying and that the group is dumb before laying them all out one-by-one^note well, he laid out Jericho and Guevara, but fled from Hager when the bottle he tried to hit him with shattered in his hand. He still took the keys to the car as he walked out through the crowd, by the way.
• I Work Alone: So far seems to be his character in AEW Mox doesn't seem to have any interest in teaming or relying on anyone else on the roster besides himself, just ask PAC. Interesting because AEW is in the midst of a turf war between The Elite and The Inner Circle warring for control over Dynamite and the top Championship while Mox himself is the top ranked single's competetitor and shows no allegiance to either party.
  • Pushed even further as time went on because Mox was the one to eventually win the title off of Jericho and has individually beaten every member of the Inner Circle despite pretty much going against them alone. Time will tell if this factors into future feuds against The Elite.
  • Subverted after he mends his friendship with his old buddy Eddie Kingston with the two of them becoming Bash Brothers. They've also teamed up with Darby Allin and his mentor Sting on occasion, simply because they like young Darby and because even hardcore ass-kickers like them can't help but idolise Sting.
• Hunk: As he gets older, Moxley becomes this with shorter hair, beard, and a more muscular body frame.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: A literal case and a rookie girl at that when La Amazona knocked him out of the International Wrestling Association's cruiser weight title tournament.
• In the Hood: He was often shown wearing hoodies during his days as Jon Moxley.
• Invincible Hero: Jon Moxley in AEW has never been booked stronger. In all his time with the company, Moxley has been presented as a nearly unstoppable Anti-Hero who's taken down everyone in his path who's challenged him, has defeated guys like Bryan Danielson who used to be able to beat Mox pre-AEW, and whenever he does lose, there's typically some kind of cheating, interference, or foul play. To this day, you can count the number of fingers on one hand the people who have cleanly defeated Moxley such as Lance Archer, CM Punk, Adam Page, Fénix, and Orange Cassidy. And in the case of Fenix, even his clean win over Moxley was never originally meant to be part of the plan.^note Moxley got injured with a concussion during the match and made the last minute decision to let Fenix beat him for the International Championship.
• It Will Never Catch On: Thought taking a Sawzall to the face was too phony for CZW's Tournament of Death 8 as the Sawzall was rendered harmless beforehand. The blade's motion moving the blood already on his face coupled with his selling made it one of the more infamous spots of the event and of Moxley's pre-WWE career.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Is very brash and outspoken, but acknowledges these faults and holds himself to his own code of honor. He also has a strong distaste for bullies and cowards, namely Chris Jericho and the Inner Circle. Seemingly backed up when he steps in to stop the Inner Circle's relentless assault on Darby Allin.
• Man Bites Man: He will often bite his opponents during his matches.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Most of his matches tends to be this, taken up to eleven with his match against Minoru Suzuki, Tomohiro Ishii, and Lance Archer.
  • His lights Out match with Kenny Omega is this from beginning to the end.
• Obfuscating Disability: After he rejected Chris Jericho's invitation to join the Inner Circle, the Circle attacked him and Chris Jericho stabbed him in the eye with a spike. Moxley would wear an eyepatch over this eye for weeks as he secured his position as #1 contender to Jericho's World Championship, but at AEW Revolution, at the climax of the championship match, Jericho blinded Moxley in his remaining eye, only for Moxley to pull the eyepatch off an reveal to a shocked Jericho that he wasn't as blind as Jericho thought.
• Older and Wiser: Seems to view himself as this. Being on a roster with a younger average age than the last place he worked probably emphasizes this. He definitely considers himself as being more mellowed out with age than anything else especially when he was preparing to face Darby Allin for the AEW championship.
  Moxley: In an ironic twist I have become the advocate. I have become the voice of reason. I have become the person concerned for somebody's health.
• One-Man Army: Where the Elite has trouble facing foes like the Inner Circle or The Dark Order Moxley was able to beat them both. By himself. And his list of enemies he's defeated just keeps growing.
• Oh, Crap!: Yes, even a badass like Mox is not immune to this. After his Wrestle Kingdom 14 match with Juice Robinson, Moxley takes his title and prepares to leave... until a very familiar music plays. The crowd went nuts and Jon Moxley realizes that he had just got the attention of a brutal, sadistic NJPW veteran: Minoru Suzuki. And while he did manage to triumph over the most-feared man in Japanese wrestling in a savage encounter, the same thing happened again after Moxley defeated Satoshi Kojima at All Out 2021, with Suzuki coming out, smiling and laughing as he confronted the man he'd had so much "fun" with last time like an old friend. Moxley's eyes almost bugged out of his head when he realised what his open challenge to the NJPW locker room (which he'd previously thought Kojima had been the only man to accept) had brought to his door.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Moxley rarely shows fear to any opponents he face, no matter how big, or how dangerous they are. But when he realizes that a psychotic veteran is coming for him with a terrifying Slasher Smile. He briefly shows a very rare Oh, Crap! reaction.
  • In his promo before their match, Moxley admits that he does fear Suzuki, but Moxley being Moxley, he chose to face his fears rather than run away from it.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Reason why he attacked Inner Circle member Santana by stabbing him in the eye as Chris Jericho had done to him weeks before.^note  doing so with the Ford GT car key that he stole from Jericho after proclaiming he wouldn't join the Inner Circle as well.In Moxley's own words:
  Moxley: An eye for an eye!
• Perky Female Minion: As Mox became more and more lost, Christina Von Eerie and Trina Michaels brought some much welcome pep to his segments.
• Phrase Catcher: The audience often chants "YOU SICK FUCK!" to him, usually in response to him doing something particularly brutal during a match.
• Power Copying: Ever since he defeated Minoru Suzuki, Moxley has added the Gotch Piledriver as one of his signature moves.
• Power Stable
  • Moxley's own "Crew" with Pepper Parks, Sami Callihan, Dick Rick and Eric Darkside in Heartland Wrestling.
  • KAMIKAZE USA with Akira Tozawa, Gran Akuma, SHINGO and YAMATO in Dragon Gate.
  • Blackpool Combat Club with Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta in AEW
• Precision F-Strike: After winning the AEW World Championship, Moxley got one in, when the sound guys thought he had finished after a long pause to soak in a reaction and hit his music prematurely:
  Moxley: I'm gonna—[music hits]— 'ey, what the fuck?!
  • Delivered another one upon his return to AEW from rehab after a heckler tried to hijack the segment.
  Moxley: Hey go fuck yourself! Get that guy out of here! Piece of shit!
• Really Gets Around: Mox bragged pretty constantly about being this.
• Red Baron: Known as The Death Rider in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The passionate, wild and intense Red to Kenny Omega's strategic and cold Blue whenever they faced off.
• The Rival:
  • Even though Pepper Parks was part of Mox's crew, they still fought over the HPW Heavyweight Title belt. Mox and tag team partner King Vu were also frequent opponents in Heartland.
  • Has consistently opposed Jimmy Jacobs wherever the two should meet up.
  • Slash Venom(otherwise known as Flash Flanagan) and La Zona Ilegal (Jumping Jeff Jeffrey y Chicano) in IWA Puerto Rico.
• Shout-Out:
  • Using "Wild Thing" by X (US Band) as his theme in AEW is a double homage: The original version by The Troggs is known in wrestling for being the entrance music of Atsushi Onita, while the cover by X is specifically known as Ricky Vaughn's entrance theme in Major League.
  • In their tag tag match against FTR at AEW Revolution 2024, Moxley and Castagnoli entered the ring wearing upper torso armor with spikes.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: If he is allowed to swear then by Sonny Jim, he will. See: His match with Minoru Suzuki in New Japan Pro-Wrestling on February 9th, 2020. Combines with Cluster F-Bomb.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: He's starting to show shades of this against MJF. Best shown at their contract signing where he lets Freidman talk for the majority of their time speaking up after one insult too many responding with a zinger of his own.
  MJF: I'd appreciate if you practiced social distancing. Kind of like your hairline, Jon.
  Moxley: Don't worry dude you'll get there one day. You just gotta hit puberty first.
• The Social Darwinist: Professional wrestling is about survival of the fittest and Moxley will light your very CZW arenas ablaze till they're all nothing but ash if that's what it takes to prove it!
• Son of a Whore: Something Jimmy Jacobs is not afraid to remind Jon Moxley of.
• Suddenly Shouting: His famed line from his 2010 promo against Bryan Danielson while still wrestling as Jon Moxley.
  Moxley: What I want…is BRYAN DANIELSON'S HEAD…on a STICK.
• Tag Team:
  • Necessary Roughness with Jimmy Turner in the Heartland Wrestling Association.
  • The Heartland Foundation with Ric Byrne.
  • Royal Violence with King Vu, also in Heartland.
  • Briefly teamed up with Brian Kendrick in Dragon Gate USA but would quickly be dropped by Kendrick, so he could reunite with Paul London.
  • Switchblade Conspiracy with Sami Callihan.
  • British Militia with Hade Vansen in the Puerto Rican branch of the International Wrestling Association
• Take Over the World: Boasted to Team Chikara while he was in Dragon Gate USA (presumbably he expected the rest of KAMIKAZE to help him somehow). No, this was not some elaborate Chikara plot, Mox was being driven (more) insane by Jimmy Jacobs.
• Take That!: One of the more subtle shots Jon Moxley took at his WWE run after his release came at the climax of his brutal debut match in NJPW against Juice Robinson where he finally managed to connect with his WWE finisher Dirty Deeds (now only called the double-arm DDT), only for Robinson to kick out. Instead of being shocked, Moxley only grinned as if to say "Oh, that was too weaksauce for you, huh?" before pulling Juice up and hitting him with his devastating new finisher, Death Rider (basically Dirty Deeds elevated). Before long this became a staple of his in long drawn-out intense matches, with Death Rider securing the wins that Dirty Deeds can't.
• Technician vs. Performer: Highlighted pretty well in his feud with Kenny Omega. With Omega as the universally acclaimed wrestling savant Technician considered better in ring-wise than Moxley. And Moxley as the emotionally charged passion driven Performer who is consistently seen as Omega's superior on the mic bringing more eyes to the product.
• Took a Level in Badass: Ever since AEW's TV debut he's been an absolute beast. Tearing through every opponent he's faced, going against competitors that outnumber him, overpower him, have more experience or are just much bigger and coming out on top. Since becoming AEW champion he's shown a much smarter side not being just a brawler but also a very knowledgeable technician focusing on submissions and mat wrestling.^note  This could come from him learning a thing or two during his time in New Japan as well as him having a more technical style in CZW. And he's said to been training in MMA for a number of years.
• Troll: Tricking Chris Jericho and The Inner Circle into believing he would join them. Dramatically unzipping his hoodie to reveal he was wearing an Inner Circle shirt and spending around 10 minutes dicking around drinking and celebrating with a lil' bit of the bubbly only to stop the festivities abruptly smashing one of the bottles over Jericho's head and leaving through the crowd. He could have easily just said no.
  Moxley: Chris my friend... I was just kiddin'.
  • Bonus points for Moxley because Jericho had promised him a Ford GT worth $750,000 if he joined them and he specifically asked for the keys from Chris while they were celebrating. When he escapes into the crowd he taunts the Inner Circle with the keys in hand. So, Moxley doesn't join the Inner Circle and stole a very expensive car right out from under Jericho.
• Versus Title: EVOLVE 7: Aries vs. Moxley.
• Villain of Another Story: Jon Moxley got to be a referee at some events where his girlfriend was wrestling. Pure cronyism, but a referee Mox is a better behaved Mox.
• Wham Shot: AEW's first PPV Double or Nothing 2019 ended featuring one. Chris Jericho is gloating on the ring after defeating Kenny Omega, demanding a thank you from the fans, before the camera cuts to a very familiar, very lunatic man pacing through the crowd and heading to the ring (a man who had become famous in another company for entering the ring through the crowd, no less).
• We Used to Be Friends: With Eddie Kingston, going back to their younger days in the indies before Mox left for WWE. They reunited again in AEW and fought for Moxley's title. Their intentions are very opposite though, While Moxley is pissed about Eddie's attitude, he hopes that he could bring his old friend back, Eddie on the other hand wants Moxley to pay for leaving him behind. They eventually mended their friendship when Eddie risked his life to save Mox from being blown up by Kenny Omega's exploding ring at Revolution 2021 (although the ring didn't explode, the thought was enough) and they teamed up again to beat people up together.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: As we learned at Blood and Guts 2022, Moxley, a hardcore wrestling specialist who revels in violence and bloodshed, is afraid of heights. Post-match, he was very obviously nervous at climbing up the cage to celebrate with his team.
• Wild Card: In AEW and other independent wrestling organizations, Moxley can be somewhat categorized as an Anti-Hero fan favorite but his actions can be so inconsistent with traditional face or heel roles that his moral alignment can be difficult to pinpoint. One minute he'll do absolute villainous things like beat the crap out of babyface jobbers for no discernible reason or savagely attack a referee with little provocation. Then the next minute, he'll be playing to the crowd like a traditional babyface and talking about how much he loves the fans and how much he respects his opponent. And he can do all of this wild, contradictory stuff in just one night.
• Worthy Opponent: Anyone who can give Moxley a good enough fight without having to stoop to dirty cowardly cheating will earn his respect. Notably, he flipped off Satoshi Kojima when he tried to offer Moxley a friendly handshake before their match at All Out 2021, but after he'd pinned Kojima following a stiff-as-hell slugfest he knelt beside his opponent's prone body and bowed politely to him. For Moxley, respect comes after the fight.
• Would Hit a Girl
  • As Jon Moxley, there were very few backstage interviewers for CZW and IPW whom he didn't manhandle.
  • His glee for beating on the Lovely Lacey kicked off his feud with Tommy Dreamer in Dragon Gate USA. Then there was Jon Moxley's (in)famous best five with Traci Brooks. At first the most eventful thing were Mox's comments making it sound like something else entirely was going on but then he got pinned and this trope came into play.
  • The Switchblade conspiracy targeted Delirious's Translator Buddy Daizee Haze in the International Wrestling Cartel.
• You Remind Me of X: "Myself" in the case of Darby Allin, his favourite Worthy Opponent and off-and-on ally in AEW. Specifically "You remind me of myself when I was younger and that's why I'm worried about you!"

As Dean Ambrose

• Always Someone Better: Despite his poor track record with feuds, Dean was this to Kevin Owens, who has yet to beat him clean or otherwise in a one-on-one match.
  • His Shield mates were this in many ways. Both having much more notable accomplishments (such as beating Triple H and Brock Lesnar") and even in the Raw vs Smackdown Survivor Series match where Roman and Seth stood opposite Dean the crowd gave Dean no reaction whatsoever while Seth and Roman were more positively reacted to.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: During a handicap match against Seth Rollins and Kane on the August 1, 2014, edition of SmackDown, Ambrose dropped this heartbreaking Star-Wars inspired line just before beating the hell out of Rollins.
  Dean: I loved you, Seth! You were my brother!
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Seth Rollins, going back to their FCW days (in fact, Rollins was Ambrose's first enemy in FCW). They apparently mended their fences long enough to form The Shield and become "brothers," but their rivalry has re-ignited, twice as bitter as before, with Seth's betrayal. Ambrose is now obsessed with beating the tar out of Rollins. The mere sight of him seems to throw Ambrose into a mindless rage. After Ambrose finally got his revenge at Money in the Bank 2016, things cooled off a bit, and a year later the two buried the ratchet and reunited as a tag team (though not until after weeks of bickering), winning the RAW tag titles together, which eventually led to reuniting The Shield in full. Unfortunately, Ambrose got injured a few months after, and when he returned his relationship with Rollins began to fray again, culminating in him betraying Rollins the same night Reigns was forced to go on hiatus to battle his leukemia, ending The Shield once more (and quite possibly forever), and restarting their rivalry once again.
  • Kevin Owens managed this distinction with only two months of serious feuding. Unlike Rollins, there's Nothing Personal about it besides the Intercontinental Championship; the two just plain don't like each other.
  • AJ Styles is shaping up to be this as well, in a half-serious half-Sitcom Arch-Nemesis sort of way. Confirmed on the 11/1/16 edition of Talking Smack, in which Dean compared himself and AJ to Peter Griffin and the chicken.
  • The Miz from WWE SmackDown until July 2017. Their wives were even involved at one point. After that point, Miz decided to antagonize Rollins and Reigns as well, which led to the Shield finally reuniting.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • His rematch with William Regal in FCW has him beating Regal so badly that Regal's bleeding and confused, and the entire locker room has to come out and restrain him, and even then he breaks away and tries to go back for more. Within the WWE scope of affairs, this one actually warranted him being "banned" from the new NXT both in and out of kayfabe: in-universe, it was due to the brutality making him unsafe for the rest of the developmental roster to work with, in reality, it was because creative struggled to find a proper way to follow up on it with the transition to NXT.
  • Until, of course, enter The Shield. Early it seemed to have been reined in somewhat since hitting the main roster as part of the stable, but even then he still showed signs of being off his rocker. Ambrose's eccentric tendencies when The Shield was interviewed (ask Michael Cole) or in match situations made clear that he was by far the most violent, erratic member of the trio. His mannerisms only add to it: he constantly twitches, flinches and seems to talk to himself when he's not on the mic, like he's just waiting an excuse to fly off the handle and beat the hell out of someone. He's licked his hand before slapping Sheamus; actually stroked Randy Orton (who is no stranger to Ax-Crazy behavior himself) on the shoulder, basically petting him as if he was his pet, in a backstage vignette, and at least one occasion, foamed at the mouth during a match.
  • During the promo where The Shield calls out the Wyatt Family, Rollins and Reigns actually do most of the talking, mainly because Ambrose is completely flipping out in the background to the point where he can't put sentences together.
• Badass Boast: "Only three things survive a nuclear explosion: Twinkies, cockroaches, and Dean Ambroses."
• Bash Brothers:
  • With Roman Reigns, especially after the breakup of The Shield.
  • When he and Seth Rollins finally buried the hatchet and became a team again, it was like they hadn't lost a beat.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Attempted to make John Cena tap out to the STF, and at No Mercy 2016, did the same to AJ Styles using the Calf Crusher.
• Berserk Button:
  • Bray Wyatt has found out (or, to be honest, already knew) that bringing up Ambrose's erstwhile father (who's in prison and was apparently either neglectful of Ambrose as a child, or simply absent from his adolescent years) is the most volatile of any berserk buttons that Ambrose has. The look on Ambrose's face whenever the subject arises, which can only be described as one of murderous fury and child-like sadness, proves just how dangerous pushing this particular button can be.
  • Wyatt lampshaded the trope on November 14, 2014, during an episode of SmackDown:
    Bray Wyatt: Now Dean, I don't know if you realize this, but... how predictable ARE you?! I mean... every time I want to see your shining face, all I have to do is push your buttons or pull the strings, and out you come, fueled with rage!
  • Up until Wyatt showed up, Seth Rollins (post-Shield betrayal) was a walking berserk button for Ambrose, to the point where the only way for Rollins to get through a week of television shows without Ambrose trying to beat the shit out of him was for Ambrose to go shoot a mov-er... get his head stomped through cinder blocks.
  • Nobody Calls Me "Nerd"!. Seth tried to warn them!
  • Anyone who messes with Renee Young is going to answer to him. One episode of Total Divas has Dean chasing a man who stole Renee's hat. Unfortunately, this is used by Bobby Lashley against him on his final apperance on Raw.
• Best Served Cold: Seth Rollins betrayed the Shield back in 2014 by planting a steel chair into Ambrose's back - a fact that Ambrose never quite got over. For a while, the mere sight of Rollins would drive Ambrose into a blind fury. As the months passed, though, he learned to control and harness some of that anger, probably so much so that Rollins didn't think Ambrose was a serious threat to him anymore (especially after Bray Wyatt interjected himself into Ambrose's sight). When Rollins spent half a year in rehab for his injured knee, his first thought was to come back, go after Reigns, and recapture the title he never lost. He did; and it was only in that moment, when Rollins had achieved a goal he'd been going after for months, that Ambrose, fresh off a Money in the Bank briefcase win, cashed in for the title and pulled it all out from under him. And unlike Seth's act of treason, Dean told everyone ahead of time this was coming.
• Beware the Nice Ones: On a meta-level, Dean Ambrose was one of the hardest working team players on WWE’s roster. But after being loaded down with too many bad gimmicks, written promos stifling his creativity, a botched micro-managing of his long awaited heel turn, and some downright depressing scripted insults towards one of his true best friends, Dean Ambrose left... and Jon Moxley returned to set the wrestling world on fire in AEW and NJPW, and bury the WWE’s creative process on Chris Jericho's podcast.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Anytime he acknowledges the "Lunatic Fringe" handle and general reputation he's been given, lampshading the fact that they mainly wear out "crazy" synonyms on him in order to sell T-shirts.
• Bitter Sweet Ending: How his WWE career ended. His heel turn flop bad, he lost a couple of matches, and his last match ended in him getting put through a table by Bobby Lashley, who had insulted his wife before the match. However, he gets to have a proper goodbye at the end of the show accompanied by his Shield brothers, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns, and seems to be on good terms with most of the guys (except for Vince) in WWE.
• Boisterous Weakling/Big Bad Wannabe: Was starting to become this towards the tail end of 2013. After Rollins and Reigns lost the WWE Tag Team Championship, Ambrose started boasting of being the only member left with a championship (the WWE United States Championship), but from then on Ambrose was frequently the one pinned during The Shield's matches.
• Brass Balls: There are few who would be more than happy to stare down Brock Lesnar in the middle of the ring, and Dean Ambrose is one of them. On the February 22, 2016 edition of Raw, Ambrose showed that he might have the biggest pair in the company. After Lesnar attempted to hospitalize him before the show started in retaliation for (arguably) costing him the triple threat number one contender's match the night before at Fastlane 2016, Ambrose hijacked an ambulance (again) and drove back to the arena to confront Lesnar. Once there, he tore off his neck brace and quite literally dragged his body towards the ring, where Paul Heyman and Lesnar had just cut a promo. The god of violent retribution, perhaps feeling the slightest tinge of mercy, simply stepped on Ambrose's head and over his body towards the ramp, only to turn back when Ambrose told him to kiss his ass and challenged to a No Holds Barred Street Fight at WrestleMania. Lesnar, perhaps a bit impressed, promptly gave him an F-5 and told Heyman to tell Ambrose that his challenge had just been accepted. Ambrose's reaction? To smile.
• Bring It: In his feud against Brock Lesnar going into Fastlane 2016, he asked Brock Lesnar to be the monster he is: to beat him so bad that he can't stand up. On the February 8, 2016 episode of Raw, Brock beat him pillar to post with suplexes and F5s…and he still got up laughing!
• Broken Pedestal: This was mutual with The Shield, post-Face–Heel Turn in 2018. From the perspective of his once-brothers, he was the team's heart in their reunion run, as it was his continued solidarity with Reigns and his forgiveness of Rollins that brought the team back together. When he fell to injury in 2017, they defended him from insults by both ally and foe alike, and refused to accept any replacements. For his part, if his WWE Chronicle edition is any indication, he believes that Seth never cared to check on him during a time in which he was dealing with a potentially life-threatening medical issue related to his shoulder injury, until such a time as he knew Dean would be back and ready to go so he could call him back to action.^note To hear Rollins' perspective, he did try to call Ambrose over his recovery time but Dean never answered the phone. Weeks after his turn he claimed that he once believed The Shield made him strong, but now came to see backing up Rollins and Reigns as a burden holding him back, and also accuses the three of them of having been "rotten to the core" behind the scenes.
• Butt-Monkey: If something bad is going to happen to a member of The Shield, more often than not it's going to happen to him. Even his post-Shield career isn't great when compared to Roman and Seth. Whereas the two are immediately thrown into the main event card, Dean spends nearly a year and a half fightning meaningless feuds that he eventually lost and was stuck as a midcard most of the time. While he eventually wins the WWE Championship, he only held it for three months before losing both the championship and his status as a main eventer. From then on, Dean's WWE run took a big step down, from being put into WrestleMania XXXIII's pre-show to losing all his single feuds. Even a Face–Heel Turn did nothing to his character and he eventually leaves the company in 2019.
• Cain and Abel: Him and Seth Rollins were this for nearly the entire time they worked in the same company. Though they weren't really considered brothers until The Shield came onto the scene. They always ended up at odds with each other eventually switching between each brother role depending on which time they were feuding. After the initial shield split Dean was the Abel then after he snapped in 2018 he was the Cain.
• Call-Back: Prior to a Fatal 4-Way Match for WWE Payback 2015, He, Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins were inovlved in a backstage brawl, ending with Seth running away without the WWE Championship. Dean picked it up from the ground, placing it on Roman's shoulder and said, "Don't worry. I'll take it on Sunday". Flash forward a year later prior to Triple-Threat Match at Battleground between him (current WWE champion), Reigns and Rollins, Ambrose confronts Reigns at a Live Event as the latter is holding the championship belt before he tossed it back to him, silently emulating the same words he was told.
• Character Development: Ambrose has grown significantly from his debut. Initially he started out as the hotheaded Wild Card member of The Shield who frequently went overboard with beatdowns against the Shield’s enemies and showed hints of being the one to turn against his teammates. Becoming jealous of Reigns and fueled by revenge towards Rollins. But overtime and on his own after The Shield’s dissolution he learned that that behavior doesn’t often lead to him winning matches. And he grew into a more collected and trusting person able to depart the company and parting ways with Rollins’ and Reign’s as friends.
  • Never was this more apparent than his storyline between Seth Rollins in 2017 where he ended up learning to forgive his former teammate. When Rollins sold out The Shield in 2014 Ambrose became obsessed with getting revenge against Seth for what he did never missing an opportunity to beat the hell out of him. But by 2017 he’d mellowed out significantly getting his revenge against Rollins by winning the WWE Championship from him and finding his own way after getting drafted to Smackdown. When he returned to RAW and found himself face to face with Rollins again who’d undergone character development of his own and apologized to him for past actions Ambrose forgave Rollins’ for what he’d done. Rollins even going as far as offering to take a steel chair to the back just as Seth had done to him all those years ago and Ambrose declined. Something that never would have happened 3 years ago.

  • Also reflected in his relationship with Roman Reigns though more understated. During the original Shield run around 2013 and going into early 2014 Ambrose started to become insecure due to Reign’s standout performances. Being the sole survivor for one example at Survivor Series 2013. He became jealous and increasingly hot headed even attempting to throw Reigns out during the Royal Rumble 2014 to only get thrown out himself. But their relationship changed when Rollins’ turning against them instead of severing their bond it strengthened it and they became closer no longer under the pressure of competing against each other and at the Royal Rumble 2015 one year later in the final four against Big Show and Kane with a Headbutt of Love Ambrose fought together with Reigns not even attempting to toss Reigns out. Their relationship remained strong all throughout Ambrose’s tenure in WWE and they continued to trust each other completely, never feuding. He’s come a long way from the guy everyone thought would be the first one to turn on The Shield.

• Combat Pragmatist: And not in the heroic "defensive" sort of way, either. Irritate him enough (doesn't take much) and he will willingly go outside of the rules to cause you as much pain as possible. He's lost a match or two by DQ by going to town on people with chairs at random.
  • Other than that, Ambrose's gameplan during a given match seems to be "run full speed at anyone not on my side and hit him repeatedly." As JBL constantly mentions regarding his standing elbow drop from the top rope, Ambrose doesn't care if what he does is a traditional wrestling move or not, as long as it hurts his opponent.
• Confusion Fu: Seems to be a character point with Ambrose. While his other former Shield brethren had pretty clearly defined functions and styles in the ring (Seth as the high-flying technician and Roman being the muscle), Ambrose is a lot more random, and it shows up in his ring psychology. Unlike other well-promoted faces, he doesn't seem to have a standard Five Moves of Doom. His hard-hitting Pendulum Clothesline is set up by a rebound off the ropes, which probably happens about twenty times in your standard wrestling match. His "Dirty Deeds" Double Arm DDT doesn't seem to have a tell until he actually locks the arms. It's often said on match commentary that opponents don't know what Ambrose is going to do next primarily because Ambrose himself doesn't know what he's going to do next.
  • Extends to his high-flying moves as well. While the suicide dive can be hit from out of nowhere, it's also equally as possible that he'll go for the dive, stop before he hits the ropes, and then plancha his opponent instead. Or do a turnbuckle-assisted elbow drop. Or simply roll out of the ring and simply punch his opponent in the face faster than his opponent can counter.
• Cue the Flying Pigs: His title win was this to some, since after so many near-misses, many were convinced that the company would never pull the trigger on him.
  • It was safe to say that no one expected Ambrose and Rollins to ever willingly team up again, much less reconcile, win the Tag Team Championships, and re-form the Shield with Reigns.
• Cut Short: The second Shield run and his tag team with Rollins, as of 12/18. Ambrose's elbow injury acquired at TLC finally caught up with him, and he was pulled from the show and sent for surgery. He ended up being out for nine months.
• A Day in the Limelight: Ambrose had this for some time after the Shield's debut (he was the first opponent The Undertaker faced in singles competition on SmackDown since his part-timer status).
• Deadpan Snarker: If he's in a relatively stable state of mind, he has a tendency to make sarcastic jabs at anyone and everyone.
• Defiant to the End:
  • As a face, he plays this trope straight often. At one point, he caught a serious beatdown at the hands of Seth Rollins, Kane and Randy Orton, and when the assault was seemingly over, he snarled at the three "Is that all you got?", despite the fact that he couldn't stand on his own. The smart remark got Ambrose Curbstomped by Rollins for his trouble.
  • In a match against Cesaro on SmackDown, the latter mercilessly attacked Ambrose's severely injured shoulder with a kendo stick, and while writhing in pain and gritting his teeth, all Ambrose had to say was "We can do this all night, Cesaro!" Ambrose, in his face incarnation, can sometimes give even Mankind a run for his money in the "More pride/guts than brains" department.
• Determinator: As part of his Ax-Crazy personality, it's become apparent that he has an absurdly high pain threshold and a refusal to stay down while he's still conscious. When The Authority's three-man squad cornered him in a boiler room, it took them several minutes to beat him down, and it was only after a Chokeslam from Kane and a Curb Stomp from Seth Rollins that Ambrose finally lost consciousness. To say nothing of the fact that Ambrose has sold an injured shoulder for well over a month and keeps wrestling in matches anyway.
  • At Hell In A Cell, he took a near 20-foot drop off the cell through a table, along with Seth Rollins, only to practically tear apart the stretcher he was being wheeled out on to get at Rollins and throw him in the cell to finish their business once and for all. That is why Mick Foley, who knows all too well about going beyond his limits (ESPECIALLY in the Cell), picked Ambrose to come out on top at HIAC.
  • The 2016 Royal Rumble. Ambrose wrestled Kevin Owens in a Last Man Standing match for the Intercontinental Championship to open up the PPV, where both men went through absolute hell. After Ambrose retained by pushing Owens off the turnbuckle and into two stables stacked on top of each other, both men proceeded to pull double duty and enter the Rumble later that night. Ambrose entered two-thirds of the way through and made it to the final two, outlasting several major stars such as Brock Lesnar, Chris Jericho, The Wyatt Family, and even his best friend Roman Reigns. He was also very close to throwing out Triple H and winning the whole thing altogether if he hadn't been fatigued by the Last Man Standing match. His stellar performance got him (and Owens) universally declared as MVP of the night.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Regardless of how much of a bad idea it is, him calling out Brock Lesnar usually ends with him getting suplexed and/or F5ed.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Ambrose went on a losing streak during his initial feud with Seth Rollins. This was mostly due to the fact that he was selling a shoulder injury from the week after Rollins betrayed the Shield all the way through the night Rollins curb-stomped him out of comission for a month. That shoulder injury was pretty much the only reason Ambrose would ever lose to Rollins, who was by that point a cowardly heel who never hesitated to run a way from a fair fight.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: In the weeks leading up to his Heel turn on October 2018, Dean complained that since the Shield reformation, its always been about Rollins and Reigns. He on the other hand has no single titles, being out of action for almost a year and during this period, Rollins replaced him with Jason Jordan as his tag team partner.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Ambrose makes a quick cameo in CM Punk's DVD Best in the World, backstage and talking with Punk.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The ending of Money in the Bank 2016. After a heartbreaking betrayal, seemingly endless hardships, and years of effort, Dean Ambrose finally became WWE Champion. Nobody in the company deserved it more than him, and the fans loved every moment of it.
• Expy:
  • Ambrose has quite a bit of Heath Ledger's Joker in his mannerisms and voice. The Joker comparisons even been made in-universe by way of an offhand comment from John Cena.
  • He's also drawn more than a few comparisons (especially with his promo style) to Brian Pillman or even a young Roddy Piper. Regarding this, Ambrose has said that he's watched so much wrestling in his life, from everywhere and from every time period, that more often than not, he has no realization that he's seemingly channeling any one wrestler. So he's gotten comparisons to, besides the aforementioned Pillman and Piper, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Terry Funk, Jake Roberts... it's an almost endless list because of his natural charisma, intense promos, and eclectic in-ring style. You could even call him the closest thing that the WWE's ever had to Mayumi Ozaki, the "Queen of Hell".
  • There are increasing parallels being drawn in-universe between Ambrose and Mick Foley, as an Ensemble Dark Horse brawler who veers toward hardcore wrestling (as much as possible in modern WWE, anyway), has a ridiculously high threshold for pain, and (depending on when you approach him) falls somewhere on the sanity scale between "a few sandwiches short of a picnic" and "short of the whole damn picnic". Ambrose also uses a double arm DDT as his finisher just like Foley did, and in the March 14, 2016 episode of Raw, was gifted the trademark barbed-wire-covered bat that Foley used during his heyday for his match against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32. To top it all off, Foley himself drew parallels between Ambrose's title win at Money in the Bank and his own back in 1999.
  • In looks and personality he is one for John Bender of The Breakfast Club.
• Face–Heel Turn: In the main event of the October 22, 2018 episode of WWE Raw, after winning the Raw tag team championships for the second time, Ambrose attacked Rollins, thus turning heel for the first time since 2014, and officially ending The Shield's second run. And it was on that same night, their best friend Roman Reigns relinquished the Universal Championship to battle his returning leukemia.
• Flanderization: Back in his Shield days he was portrayed as a mercenary type character who was able to put on a normal face, but was obviously unhinged and just waiting for an excuse to hurt somebody. After The Shield broke up and he didn't bother with that normal facade anymore, he began devolving briefly into a "lunatic" character who frequently costs himself matches by trying to perform pointless stunts that only end up hurting himself. Fans are pretty split on which portrayal they prefer.
• Forgiveness: Without a doubt, the hardest thing Dean Ambrose ever had to do in his entire career was forgive Seth Rollins. It became clear early on that it wasn't because he didn't want to — on the contrary, more than once it was implied that it was the one thing he wanted to do, more than anything else. It was because Dean was scared of doing so and being betrayed again, causing him to lash out when Seth tried to make amends. On Seth's end, he completely understood Dean's anger and refusal and was willing to take his verbal and even physical abuse, but it didn't stop him from being frustrated about it, especially since Dean wasn't innocent either (though admittedly more justified). Eventually, both realized that in order for to reconcile, Seth had to forgive Dean as well.
• Foreshadowing: On the last Raw before Money in the Bank 2016, Ambrose holds an Ambrose Asylum segment with his former partners Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins on their upcoming championship match. Near the end Ambrose interjects that since he's part of the Money in the Bank match at the PPV also, he could win the contract and cash in his opportunity that same night on whoever wins between Rollins and Reigns. He proceeds to do exactly that and win his first WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
  • In one of his last WWE promos before the Shield's match at Fastlane 2019, Ambrose said "Eight years ago I walked into this casino and now I'm cashing in my chips and I'm walking away from the table." After leaving WWE, he would make his return to the wrestling scene when he showed at the end of AEW's casino-themed Double or Nothing PPV, with his debut climaxing in him fighting Kenny Omega up to the top of a stack of giant poker chips that decorated the set and hurling Omega off.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Making it a point that Rollins will not cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase.
    Ambrose: Every time you ever think about cashing in that contract, I’m gonna be there. I’m gonna haunt you. So go and make all the plans you want, 'cause that briefcase you’re holding doesn’t have a contract inside. It’s loaded with TNT, and every time you try to cash it in, it’s gonna blow up in your face, Seth. Believe that.
  • How right did he turn out to be? Rollins had to wait until WM 31, when Ambrose was completely debilitated and damaged in the IC Title Ladder match, before he could think to cash in his MITB contract in the main event.
  • Historically in wrestling, there are two ways to guarantee one's calculated plan will fail: if it gets leaked on camera in advance or if it's a repeat of something they've already done. Furthermore, the Money in the Bank ladder match takes quite a toll on every competitor involved—there's a reason Kane's the only one who ever cashed in MITB the same night he won it. So naturally, on the go-home Raw to Money in the Bank 2016, Dean Ambrose, the same guy who's either come up short or got screwed countless times in world title situations, attempts at revenge on Seth Rollins, and competitions against Roman Reigns alike, took it upon himself to host The Ambrose Asylum with Reigns and Rollins as his guests and outright tell them that he would win the MITB ladder match and then cash in on the winner of their title fight that same night to walk out the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. On its face it looked like Ambrose had just screwed himself into coming up short in the title picture yet again, either by painting a target on his back by slighting the physical stake of the ladder match or by openly scooping the champ in on his move in advance and giving them time to prepare for it. Even Rollins dismissed the possibility out of hand in an interview later in the week, it was so blithely stupid. Except it wasn't.
  • Even after taking a hellacious beating from Brock Lesnar, he wasn't about to let Kevin Owens get the drop on him.
    Ambrose: Hey Kev! There's a giant TV screen right there, I can see you from a mile away!
• Gimmick Matches: He's often put into different types of No Disqualification matches. In 2016, he introduced a variant of a Steel Cage match which befits his Lunatic Fringe gimmick, an Asylum Match.
• Grand Finale: The main event of Fastlane 2019 with The Shield was treated like this for Ambrose. Both to pre-existing Shield storylines with Rollins and Reigns and to his WWE career and story arc as a whole since he was leaving the company. ^note  That is until WWE ran another PPV about a month later entitled 'The Shield's Last Chapter' though their last match at Fastlane was more definitive. A lot of emphasis was put on this being the end of and era with Reigns begging for Rollins and Ambrose to repair their relationship ^note  Ambrose had turned heel during Reigns' absence to battle leukemia and upon his return many things were still in the air with there being a lot of confusion on whether Ambrose was truly leaving the company and if plot threads were going to be abandoned or not since he was still a bad guy and had turned on his friends. But if he was leaving the company many believed closure for Ambrose's story was needed on his and the rest of The Shield's account. before Ambrose left so they could get the band back together one last time. With commentary putting it over as the match ended and Ambrose, Rollins and Reigns hugging together in the ring.
  Corey Graves: And finally, everything ends up exactly how it should be.
• The Heart:
  • Seems to have become this to the Shield in their second run, especially after his injury. Every time someone mentions Ambrose's injury, expect Roman Reigns to go ballistic (particularly at Samoa Joe, who injured his "brother") and Seth Rollins to Death Glare. It makes sense, as out of all three members, Ambrose is arguably the one who took the break up the hardest. It was only because of his forgiveness and reconciliation with Rollins that the reunion run was possible in the first place.
  • It became even more explicit after he left the company and both Rollins and Reigns turned heel in the following years. During his brothers' brief January 2022 feud, Reigns revealed that he had never forgiven Rollins for betraying Ambrose and him, and Rollins admitted he had known that all along. When you take that into account, that implies the only reason the later Shield runs even happened at all is because Ambrose was there to keep the peace and tie them together. Something that was all but confirmed by Rollins during that very same feud.
• Heel–Face Turn: When The Shield collectively turned face. After the split, Ambrose is still a bit psychotic, but still a face. In 2019 Ambrose reunited with Rollins and the then-recently returned Reigns on the March 4 episode of Raw, after they assisted Ambrose from an attack by Elias, Baron Corbin, Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley the previous week, reverting Ambrose into a face again.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: A leather jacket became part of his "street brawler" outfit ensemble since June 2014.
• He's Back!: At Night of Champions 2014, Seth Rollins offered an open challenge to anyone in the locker room since Roman Reigns had to undergo emergency hernia surgery a few days before the event. Cue Dean Ambrose rolling up in a cab and beating Seth up and down the arena.
  • In the last moments of the 8/13 Raw before Summerslam, Seth Rollins came out to announce that he'd have backup for his Intercontinental Championship match against Dolph Ziggler (who had Drew McIntyre in his corner ready to continue his recurring beatdowns of Seth)... a returning Dean Ambrose, fresh off eight months of rehab. The roof blew off the building when Dean appeared (looking like he'd been in prison lifting weights, not rehabbing a triceps injury).
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Him and Roman are this both onscreen and in Real Life, exemplified by his honorary Samoan status.
  • Him and Seth also shared a similar a dynamic while they were still in the Shield, which is partially why Dean took Seth's betrayal so badly. They returned to this dynamic when they made up and became tag team partners in 2017.
• History Repeats: Dean wins his first and third Intercontinental Championship at TLC at the same month.
• Homoerotic Subtext: With Seth Rollins, in a deep contrast to his relationship with Roman Reigns. While mostly everyone sees him and Roman as bros, by mid-2017 everyone, including those who usually ignore the homoerotic aspect of wrestling, were starting to view his relationship with Seth in a decidedly non-platonic light. It certainly seems to be intentional, seeing as WWE centered their reconciliation storyline around the question of "Are Seth and Dean getting back together?", and considering that Ambrollins is THE Fan-Preferred Couple of The Shield (some might even say its the most popular pairing in modern wrestling fandom), a person wouldn't put it past the company to milk that for all its worth.
• Honorary True Companion: To the Anoa'i family in kayfabe, though it's also been implied to be Reality Subtext. He's been so heavily associated with them that it's often joked that Dean is the only Samoan other than Samoa Joe in the company that's not blood-related to them.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Has done this twice through his own show, The Ambrose Asylum. First was during his feud with Chris Jericho, when Ambrose hijacked the latter's Highlight Reel; the second was against The Miz and his own show Miz TV (after the latter also hijacked The Highlight Reel on the very same night.)
• Hypocritical Humor: Prior to their match against Kevin Owens, Chris Jericho and Alberto Del Rio, Ambrose warns Cesaro and Sami Zayn to watch out for the former two because they are Canadians, in front of his own Canadian tag team partner Zayn. Oh, and guess where his girlfriend comes from?
• I Just Want to Have Friends: An underlying current of Dean's character is his desire to be a part of family/unit, in relation to his Dark and Troubled Past, which has only been alluded to onscreen. For all his claims of being a lone wolf, Dean never tried to push Roman away after the Shield's initial break up. To say nothing of how badly he took Seth's betrayal; part of why Dean was so reluctant to forgive Seth is because he wanted to, but was also terrified of being burned by him again.
• In the Hood: In 2014, Dean Ambrose started wearing a hoodie during his entrance.
• Irony:
  • In Kayfabe, one of the main reasons why authority figures are so against him becoming WWE Champion is because his insanity and general unpredictability makes him a potential risk for scandal should he ever become the face of the company, hence why they support the other members of The Shield (they picked Seth Rollins to pull a Face–Heel Turn on the group and become the face of the company, and shortly after Rollins got injured, Triple H said that they considered Roman Reigns for that spot, but that he put his morals and convictions first rather than selling out). Out of Kayfabe, Ambrose is the only member of the group to not have scandal attached to his name. Rollins got caught having an affair behind his fiancee's back when she posted NSFW images of him and his lover on social media, and has been plagued with injuries to his opponents during his title reign, culminating in he himself getting injured to end said title reign. The aforementioned lover also got fired six months after their affair was revealed for something completely unrelated to the incident — someone dug out Neo Nazi artwork that was posted on her Twitter and Instagram, and it reflected badly on Seth, who was still dating her at the time. Reigns has had his controversial mega-push where he was clearly projected to be the next face of the company, despite the ardent and vocal resistance of fans all across the country, and then his suspension for a wellness policy violation. Ambrose, being an incredibly private person (he virtually has no personal presence on social media), a safe and decent worker, a company man, and an Ensemble Dark Horse, proved to be the most reliable of the three as the potential next face of the company, especially after all the work he put in during the 2016 Road to WrestleMania when the other two were out of commission. That's probably part of why they decided to finally pull the trigger on him at the 2016 Money in the Bank PPV.
  • The January 2022 feud between a heel Roman Reigns and a heel Seth Rollins revealed that Reigns never forgave Rollins for breaking up the Shield despite all his efforts, and still legitimately hates the guy. Meaning that Ambrose, despite seemingly taking the betrayal the hardest to the point of starting a blood feud over it, was actually the only one of the group to really make peace with what happened and genuinely forgive Rollins.
  • As a coda to the above, Ambrose turned out to be the sanest member of the Shield in long run. After he left, Rollins became a Practically Joker Psychopathic Man Child with a messiah complex, while Reigns became a sociopathic mob boss who gaslighted his own cousins into becoming his lackeys. Even at his craziest in WWE, Ambrose was nowhere near as unstable as his two teammates have become, and it's strongly implied that his departure is the reason why both of them went so insane to begin with.
• It's Personal: Ambrose's feud with former Shield teammate Seth Rollins, whom Ambrose had considered a brother. Keep in mind that, at the Shield summit following Rollins's Rage Quit, Ambrose had said that the one thing he couldn't stand was being lied to by somebody he trusts.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Make no mistake, Ambrose was an absolute prick to Dolph Ziggler in their Summerslam feud, putting down his abilities as a wrestler and mocking him for not having what it takes to be a world champion. However, he was right about one thing. As Dean put it so delicately to Dolph, even if Ziggler did win and become the world champion, it doesn't mean his problems will magically disappear overnight and his life will become complete. On the contrary, his life as a world champion will become even more stressful as pressures will mount for him to carry the company on his back. Not only that, but wrestlers, management, and even fans themselves will watch him like vultures and just wait for him to slip up and fall. Basically, even if Dolph does win, his critics, doubters, and personal demons will still be there but as world champion, he has an even bigger target on his back for all the doubters and naysayers. Pretty much, Ambrose gave Dolph the straight scoop and told him that he'd better have "ice water running through [his] veins" if he wanted to be world champion.
  • When he's a heel, he was an absolute dick. Attacking Rollins the day that Roman Reigns got cancer and only justifies his actions by claiming both Rollins and Reigns are the caused of his heel turn. However, he also made a valid point that while Roman, Seth, and Dean are unstoppable, Roman and Seth always gets the limelight and even got big push in their career, meanwhile Dean was always put in the mid card. His place seems to have meaning when only it's with both of them and never been given the push that both his brothers have gotten and seems to be treated as a joke most of the time. However, what makes this not completely right is that it's neither Seth's nor Roman's fault, but the WWE creatives, and to a greater extend Vince himself.
• Lampshade Hanging: On the March 3, 2016 episode of SmackDown, Kevin Owens tried to jump Ambrose from behind while Ambrose was facing the ramp. After dodging the attack and sending Owens scurrying with a chair shot to the back, he casually informed K.O. that he saw him coming a mile away because "There's a giant TV screen right there" while motioning to the large TitanTron display.
• Lighter and Softer: Jon Moxley, both pre and post-WWE, is known for both his serious character and for taking part in some brutal hardcore matches; it comes with being a CZW alumnus. Dean Ambrose by contrast rarely got to take part in those kind of matches, and was also given the occasional comedy angle to work through.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Ambrose's 2010s hairline is in... let's say, famously rough shape. On the other hand, Moxley in his very early career had a flowing mane past his shoulders. This can be seen in an appearance he makes for WWE Velocity in 2006, barely 20 years old.
• Love Is a Weakness: Saw his time with The Shield as this post his 2018 heel turn. He got better.
  Ambrose: The truth is The Shield made me weak. You made me weak. Roman made me weak. The burden of being your brother, the burden of having to watch your back made me weak.
• Made of Iron: In defiance of WWE's incredibly grueling physical schedule, Ambrose had, up until December 2017, been their resident Ironman. This status includes a streak of over 900 matches wrestled, fewer than 40 consecutive days off at a time, and no major injuries.
• Master of Disguise: How he normally ambushes his enemies. So far, he's been a hotdog vendor, a cameraman, a pizza deliveryman, a hockey player, the Mountie, the Miz's security guard and a bear costume.
• Messy Hair: To go with his personality.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Sort of an example in Professional Wrestling. After the break-up of The Shield, Ambrose went from using a headlock driver called Dirty Deeds as his Finishing Move to start using a double underhook DDT as a new finishing move, which is also called Dirty Deeds. It has easier and faster setup and execution (in and out of kayfabe) and is more damaging (kayfabe-wise) than the original headlock driver version (In reality, it is because 1) nobody in the current roster uses the double underhook DDT and 2) the original Dirty Deeds greatly resembles Adam Rose's Party Foul and Ambrose probably decided that he should be the one who must change his own finisher).
• Mirror Character: With Randy Orton, who was also pushed well and truly over the deep end by a friend's betrayal and has leaned to channel that madness into his wrestling and promo styles, although he's a little more crazy than Orton. Randy may hear some voices in head, but it's his rage that really makes him dangerous — unprovoked, Randy can at least assume the appearance of someone with sound mental faculties (if a little bit ruthless). With Dean, you can tell right off the bat that the man is not right in the head, unprovoked or not.
• Morality Chain: Ever since his departure from the company, it's been subtly implied that he (or at least The Shield) was this for both Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins. After Ambrose was gone, Reigns and Rollins ended up on different shows, drifted apart, and eventually ended up making heel turns.
• Motive Decay: His 2018-2019 Face–Heel Turn suffered this in short order as WWE could not commit to a reason for his turn. First he claimed to have realized that backing The Shield weakened him rather than making him stronger as he initially thought; then he vaguely alluded to the trio having secretly been "rotten to the core" while implying that Reigns' bout with leukemia was his penance for this; then he called Rollins a posturing false hero for his "The Reason You Suck" Speech against Baron Corbin^*as the proxy for WWE Creative and claimed it was no different from Seth's earlier manipulation of both Roman and himself; and this was before WWE stopped mentioning Reigns after getting wind of enough fan backlash.^*plus Ambrose refusing to say a certain line Vince wanted him to say about Reigns during this time which he felt would've done catastrophic damage to the company's image as well as been thoroughly disrespectful to his actual friend Once that happened, WWE gave him a Bane gimmick with a SWAT team, which not only completely undercut the scene of him burning a tac vest after betraying The Shield, but also effectively reverted him back to the "wacky Dean" antics of his face run except with a weird germaphobic fixation for Cheap Heat. This destroyed his heel run and set him up to go back to being a face and reunite The Shield as soon as Reigns returned both in-universe^*as the vast inconsistency fit with his character's madness and could effectively be portrayed as him getting all his frustration out of his system and in Real Life.^*with Ambrose being so sick of how terrible this booking was that it contributed to the creative burnout resulting in him deciding to leave the company after WrestleMania 35
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • What he did to William Regal. Holy God, what he did to William Regal...
  • He also gave numerous beatings as a part of The Shield.
  • Took one from Seth Rollins and Kane at the conclusion of an epic no DQ match on the Raw after SummerSlam 2014. He wasn't seen since then... until Night of Champions 2014 happened.
• No Sense of Personal Space: He's very fond of kissing his opponents in the middle of matches. Particularly Seth Rollins. Subverted during his feud with Bray Wyatt. After a table spot, Ambrose kisses Wyatt (keep in mind that Wyatt himself kisses his opponents in the forehead before hitting his finishing move), who returns the favor by beating the shit out of him.
• Noodle Incident: On the 9/22/14 episode of Raw, Ambrose (for about the tenth time) tried to jump Seth Rollins, only to be apprehended by The Authority's security goons, who would have escorted Ambrose out of the building until Stephanie McMahon, in a moment of cunning, had him thrown into a locked storage closet and set 5 guards in front of the only door. He reappears at the end of the episode in a box that, given Seth Rollins' dialogue, was probably supposed to be full of several cinder blocks. It's never explained where Dean would have put the cinderblocks... or, more importantly, how the hell Ambrose managed to escape a locked closet with five very burly men guarding the only door... His explanation for how he escaped from that closet? "There was a backdoor."
• Obfuscating Insanity:
  • Make no mistake, Dean Ambrose is eccentric and unpredictable and tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. But don't think for a second that the man isn't smart. In the build-up to the 2014 MITB, Ambrose used his established loose-cannon status to secure a place in the match. When he got the news that Seth Rollins literally begged that he be put in the match, Ambrose's initial reaction was to laugh and say "I knew he would." In short, Ambrose played him like a fiddle. Who's the chess-master, again?
  • Taking advantage of Cena's tendency to take on all comers by causing the rest of the Authority to get involved in his and Cena's No-DQ Contract-on-a-Pole match for Hell In A Cell against Seth Rollins. Cena predictably started trading blows with Rollins, Orton, and Kane. Meanwhile, Ambrose snuck around behind the action and by the time Cena had cleared the ring, Ambrose already had the contract in hand.
  • He did this for Money in the Bank 2016. Starting with the go-home show, he just made the most idiotic mistake you could make with a master plan in wrestling by blatantly announcing the plan to its intended victims, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns, in front of the whole world before even getting the pieces in place (which in itself would be a doozy of a task). But that's just it. He did it blatantly. To get said victims to completely underestimate him and dismiss the idea of it working. The result? He walked out of Money in the Bank the WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The February 10, 2014 episode of Raw saw Ambrose claiming that the reason nobody was challenging him for his title was, simply put, because no one had the guts. This spurs him to issue an open challenge to the locker room later that night. Cue chanting and hip-hop beat... yep. It's Mark Henry. Ambrose was visibly terrified.
  • His knee-jerk reaction to Rollins hitting Reigns with a steel chair was equal parts disbelief, confusion, and this trope.
• Only Friend: With the revelation that Reigns never truly forgave Rollins for breaking up the Shield, it's implied that Ambrose was this for Rollins. This is only reinforced when you realize that Rollins' two major heel runs coincided with him being on the outs with Ambrose.
• Only Sane Man: Of The Shield. Yes, really. Ambrose is the only member of the Shield that was truly able to make peace with the stable's dissolution. In fact, besides his brief heel run in 2018-2019, the Shield's break-up ended up improving his sanity in the long run. By comparison, his teammates underwent severe Sanity Slippage, in part driven by Ambrose's departure from the company.
• Perma-Stubble: There was a time when he did wrestle without hair below his eyelashes, believe it or not. Though in 2016 he grew a full beard.
• Popularity Power:
  • A lot of people perceive this to be the reason why Ambrose got relegated to being just "Roman Reigns' best friend" during the Wyatt feud, though Ambrose got his own push towards the Intercontinental Championship eventually. The truth of the matter is, Ambrose was pretty much the only male singles face that was completely over with the audience by the end of 2015, especially since the injury bug went nuts around that time and Daniel Bryan had been a non-factor for most of the year. Reigns, who the company desperately wanted to get over as the next top face even though the fans made it blatantly clear that they wanted Ambrose if Bryan was no longer an option, was partnered up with him as a result. Not that it didn't make sense, thanks to the Shield and all, but it didn't make the fans any less resentful, and the Intercontinental Championship was an attempt to compromise. Further complicating the issue is the fact that the man Ambrose eventually took the title from was Kevin Owens, who was popular himself. Many considered this to be a blessing in hindsight, since Ambrose and Owens proceeded to have a critically-acclaimed feud that many fans stated was the most interesting thing on WWE programming for its duration.
  • When Ambrose finally won the WWE Championship, the crowd absolutely exploded, and the following night they were hot for him, chanting his name and "YOU DESERVE IT!", and hanging on to every word of his championship promo. A lot of people have remarked that Ambrose's reign is refreshing, since he's arguably the first true face champion since Daniel Bryan. Everyone who has held the title since Bryan was forced to vacate it were either heels (Rollins, Lesnar, Sheamus, Triple H) that had issues getting heel heat from the crowd,^note Rollins is majorly popular with the hardcore crowd, Lesnar has transcended traditional face/heel dynamics, very few people cared about Sheamus, regarding him as irrelevant, and Hunter's usually successful mega-heel antics fell flat and instead gave him face-like heat thanks to a combination of nostalgia, NXT, and the face he was feuding with or faces (Cena, Reigns) that were from divisive to universally disliked.^note while people have warmed up to Cena in later years, the base is still split over him holding the title again, while Reigns was on the fast track to becoming the most hated wrestler in modern-day WWE thanks to his terrible mega-push until he was temporarily sidelined by a recurrence of leukemia in 2018 Ambrose is the first champion in a while to get a reaction that isn't disingenuous.
  • Ambrose was so popular that every time he teased a potential Face–Heel Turn in 2018, the fans cheered for him. WWE was only able to successfully turn him on the one night that the fans would've never accepted it: the night Roman Reigns was forced to vacate the Universal Championship and take a hiatus from WWE due to his leukemia returning. It was the night that him and Seth Rollins needed each other more than ever, the night they won the Tag Team Championships together in Reigns' name, the night that everyone, from the fans to Ambrose and Rollins themselves, needed a feel-good moment to end on. Hell, it was the night that finally managed to band the world behind Reigns. Instead, the fans watched The Shield implode for a second time, and this time, not from an unexpected, calculated betrayal, but from one that had building for a long time, and had boiled over in a extreme fit of emotion. And even then, people sympathized with Ambrose even though they hated what he did, as they understand on some level why it happened.
• Power Stable: In much less flattering role, The Shield were brought under Triple H and Stephanie McMahon in WWE and made to protect Randy Orton.
• Power Trio: The Shield, Rollins being the high flier and the strategist, Reigns being the muscle and Ambrose being the unpredictable brawler and talker.
• Precision F-Strike: When Seth Rollins turned his back on The Shield, you can see Dean Ambrose mouth what appears to be "The fuck...?"
• Psychopathic Manchild: Would you believe Dean Ambrose believes himself to be on the side of justice? At least he did when he was in The Shield, where justice apparently meant "Ruin the show for the faces by any means necessary." To be fair, given that this is Ambrose we're talking about, it's not hard to believe that this is how his inner sense of morality works.
• Put on a Bus: After being Curb Stomped through a pile of cinder blocks by Seth Rollins the Raw after 2014's SummerSlam, Dean was last seen being stretchered out of the arena. Off-screen, he refused medical treatment and went missing, leading commentators and The Authority to speculate as to his state until he returned a month later.
• Rage Breaking Point: Ambrose's Face–Heel Turn is interesting in that it was simply treated as an inevitability. Even years before it finally happened, the fans knew that, one way or another, Ambrose was going to turn heel. It was the most logical direction of his character; Ambrose was never the most stable of individuals to begin with, and with the endless number of misfortunes he's had to endure since the Shield broke up (not least of which was one of his two closest friends betraying him and his other friend), he was going to snap one day. When that day came, at the expense of Rollins (the friend who betrayed him and whom he had seemingly forgiven a year before), the act itself wasn't a surprise to anyone — it was the timing that made it such a shock.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The real reason for the above example in Put on a Bus is that he had to be written out of storyline temporarily so that he could film a WWE Studio movie.
• Really Gets Around: Subverted with Ambrose's "Titty Master" meme — it began when pictures of Ambrose with "Titty Master" written on the tapes of his hands during a European tour became viral, and Roman Reigns confirmed this was actually in reference to Ambrose frequently wrestling the wide-chested heavyweight Big E during that European tour (and Big E was in fact part of the match from where the pictures came).
• Red Baron: Michael Cole has dubbed him "The Lunatic Fringe" of The Shield.
• Remember the New Guy?: All the members of The Shield were introduced as NXT invaders despite Ambrose never actually appearing on the show.^note He did however wrestle on NXT house shows and dark matches. His WWE.com bio justifies this by saying his closing match of NXT's developmental predecessor FCW against William Regal was so brutal he wasn't allowed to compete on NXT as a result.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Ambrose didn't take his "brother" Rollins' betrayal well. At all. In fact, he would abandon a match in order to get his hands on Seth if the latter happened to appear at ringside. One of those times was when Ambrose was in match to qualify for the ladder match for the vacant WWE World Heavyweight title at Money in the Bank. Whoops. To add injury to insult, Ambrose was so blinded by rage that Rollins was able to lead him right into Bray Wyatt's arms and escape without a scratch. Cue Sister Abigail to Ambrose as Rollins watches and laughs.
  • This actually comes back to bite Rollins in the ass somewhat, as Ambrose's assaults show he will pursue him endlessly until he gets his hands on him and Dean actually admits as much on the 6/23/14 WWE Raw, saying he'll go so far as to sabotage the MITB match and the PPV itself unless he's put in the match alongside Rollins and the others. Rollins knows Ambrose isn't just speaking hyperbole and forces Triple H to put Ambrose in the match so he "can control Ambrose."
  • Backfired at Battleground 2014 when Ambrose compromised his match with Rollins by his inability to wait for a chance to get his hands on him and jumped him before the match began, resulting in him getting banned from the building. Not that it stopped him from showing up twice to come after Rollins.
  • Came up again at Survivor Series 2016 after his scuffle with SmackDown teammate/rival AJ Styles and Styles' non-attempt to break up an ensuing pinfall led to Ambrose being eliminated from the 5-on-5 Men's elimination match. Later, after it came down to Styles and the Wyatts versus Rollins and Reigns, cue Ambrose storming the ring, assaulting Styles (his teammate, mind you), and even joining in on a Shield reunion to beat up security and put Styles through an announce table, leading to the WWE World Champion's elimination. All of SmackDown's announce team, who typically don't always get along with each other, lampshaded how stupid Ambrose was for nearly^note SmackDown ended up winning with Bray and Orton remaining, but still...costing SmackDown the match and leading to a Raw sweep^note Raw had won the first two of three traditional SS elimination matches of Survivor Series.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Sure, his unpredictability is what fans love about him, but his character's lack of emotional control seemed to be portrayed as causing him more problems than it solves. Bray Wyatt has even called Ambrose out on it a couple of times, and while Wyatt isn't a hell of a lot more sane than Ambrose himself, and thus his statements ring somewhat hollow, there's some legit reasons to back this up: During his TLC match with Wyatt, Dean Ambrose discovered a small monitor under the ring and saw that it was projecting his face and the crowd behind him on the jumbotron. He clowned around with it, and that let Bray recover and attack him. But far more damningly later was Dean's decision to try to smash Bray Wyatt's face with the monitor. The monitor exploded in his face when it reached the end of its cord, and Bray Wyatt hit Sister Abigail for the pinfall. In hindsight, after having this thrown into his face so many times, it's no coincidence that the end of the Shield caused Ambrose to undergo Sanity Strengthening, in contrast to his brothers' Sanity Slippage.
• Sanity Strengthening: This is what the dissolution of the Shield ended up doing to him in the long run. Initially he was as insane as ever and even more erratic and violent without Reigns and Rollins to hold the leash. But that proved to be a detriment to his career, something Ambrose gradually came to realize and forced him to learn how to control himself better. By the time he left the company in 2019, he was relatively stable, if jaded and more violent than he used to be. Ironically, that proved to contrast him with both Reigns and Rollins, who both went crazier than he ever did after his departure.
• Signature Move: Rebound/Jawbreaker/Pendulum Lariat, adopted from Nigel McGuinness. In WWE, he's also known for being the one guy that can and will drop the elbow on a standing opponent.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: After the first Shield split Ambrose's outfits shifted to a simple tanktop◊ jeans jacket◊ combo with very little variation for years. When he turned heel on Seth Rollins in 2018 he put a lot of effort in trying to look as different◊ as possible seeming◊ to show up◊ in a different outfit◊ every week to reflect the change in himself. Then when Roman returned from illness he reverted back to The Shields original style but would maintain his more distinct style every now and again before departing the company.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: By necessity. During the build between Fastlane 2016 and WrestleMania 32, Ambrose was effectively the only full-time main event talent active as Roman Reigns had to get facial reconstruction surgery for a deviated septum and would be out for at least a couple of weeks, while the rest (Cena, Orton, and Rollins) were rehabbing serious injuries. With the rest of the main event talent available being part-timers, two of whom only being booked for a couple of shows, Ambrose and Triple H had to carry Raw by themselves.
• Start of Darkness: His WWE Chronicle episode, which reads less like a documentary and more like his gradual descent into psychopathy.
• Talk Show with Fists: The Ambrose Asylum, which interrupted one of Chris Jericho's The Highlight Reels.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: To Randy Orton during Extreme Rules 2014:
  "Believe in the Shield, bitch!"
• To the Pain: The day after Seth Rollins turned on the group, Ambrose went into excruciating detail about how he would rearrange Rollins' face. After twitching the entire time, he smacked the mic out of his own hand, only for Reigns to give him a smile (almost in a friendly, "How the hell am I supposed to follow that?" manner), and Ambrose to gingerly bend over and hand Reigns the mic.
  Ambrose: When I get the opportunity to rearrange your face, which I will... your nose isn't gonna be over here anymore, it's gonna be over here... [slides finger from his own nose towards his ear]... by your ear. I say "ear" because you're only gonna have one left. I'm gonna rip your dirty, stinkin' hair out by the roots, and I'm gonna stuff it in your mouth— there'll be plenty of room where your teeth used to be.
  Seth Rollins... [begins to hyperventilate and beats his own chest while smiling maniacally]... my brother... we want you to stand out here in front of the whole world, and we want them to hear Triple H's words comin' out of your mouth. We're gonna listen to every word of it, and then we're gonna beat the hell out of you. [slaps microphone out of own hands emphatically]
• Took a Level in Badass: Not that he wasn't badass before (being a former world champion and all), but when he came back from injury he looked noticeably buffer and had gotten a new haircut, and, as the following week showed, a less "wacky" in-ring style. Combined with a more serious attitude, many fans commented that he looked like someone who had just gotten out of prison.
• Tsundere: To Seth Rollins during their reconciliation storyline in 2017, which only added to the Homoerotic Subtext of the entire situation.
• Undying Loyalty: To Roman Reigns. Where one is, the other isn't far behind, and one will usually try to make the save if the other is in trouble. It's even to the point that each is totally supportive of the other becoming champion.
• The Unchosen One: Ambrose is being put in a position where he was liked by both fans and most members of the creative team. However, Vince McMahon is set on making Roman Reigns the next star, forcing Dean to the sidelines for years. Even when he holds the WWE Championship, it was short and meaningless and after losing it, he might as well be reduced to a jobber. Ironically, he would find more success after leaving WWE and joining AEW.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He really doesn't like them. Unfortunately for him, he pissed off Jake "The Snake" Roberts himself on an episode of Old School Raw and ended up knocked out with a snake draped on his chest. He was not very happy when he found this out after the fact, and threw a fit about it the following SmackDown.
• Will They or Won't They?: The bromantic version with Seth Rollins, in which they spent the summer of 2017 teasing whether or not they would get back together as a team. The fact that they both acted like major Tsunderes to each other during that storyline laid on the Homoerotic Subtext real thick.
• Worked Shoot: This entire promo, post-Fastlane.
• Worthy Opponent: Seth Rollins considers them "wrestling soulmates", as stated in The Destruction of The Shield DVD. This is especially apparent during their feud over the FCW 15 title, which is defended in fifteen minute iron man matches. They went the first two matches without falls, and the second match had five-minute overtime. Even their third match, which was thirty minutes, ended in a draw with two falls a piece, forcing them to go into sudden death overtime, which isn't really much of a victory for either man. That series of matches is considered to be among the best in the history of FCW prior to its repackaging as NXT, and really highlights their inability to have a bad match against each other.

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