AEW’s Jon Moxley & Renee Paquette Get Candid About Their Marriage, Family Life & More

Jon Moxley has been known for his bloody battles in All Elite Wrestling. Renee Paquette is held in high regard for her interview and hosting skills at the network. Despite being polar opposites on paper, in a case of opposites attract, their relationship blossomed within the wacky world of pro wrestling. 

The brawler and TV personality got together during their time in WWE in 2013, married in 2017, and had daughter Nora in 2021. Moxley and Paquette really are just like any other couple. Whether it’s relaxing at home from the craziness of their unique jobs or spending time with Nora at Disneyland, they have learned to appreciate every moment together. 

Here the pair sit down exclusively with TV Insider to provide a rare glimpse of family life outside the ring. Ahead of Revolution pay-per-view on March 15, Moxley and Paquette also open up about career ambitions and how they help others in their respective AEW roles. 

It’s hard to believe next year you’ll be celebrating your 10-year wedding anniversary. What would you say is your secret to a happy marriage? 

Renee Paquette: Oh God, Jon, I’ll let you take that one. You’re the romantic.

Jon Moxley: That’s a trade secret, man. If I let her know, it ruins the illusion. Everything would then fall apart. 

Renee: For me, it’s almost like that Venn diagram where we very much have our own things we’re doing and stay on task doing those things, but then there is that part we come together on. It’s nice to sort of have our own world and then have the stuff we come together on. We’re not constantly breathing down each other’s neck, which could happen when you work with your spouse. 

I would assume you don’t see much of each other on show days. 

Renee: Yeah, a lot of the time I go to the building before Jon. We always leave together at the end of the night, but I’ve got to be there earlier in the day than him. I’ve got other things I need to be doing. Then once he gets there, he is in full work mode. We’re sort of like ships passing in the night a little bit. 

Jon: If I see her with makeup on and some kind of power sports jacket and headset on, I don’t even register that as the same person. When she is in uniform, she almost registers as a different person. 

Renee: That’s true. The Jon I hang out on the couch at the end of the night is different from the Jon I see at work. 

Maybe that’s part of your success too is knowing when to turn work off at home. I know Jon’s very driven and a student of the game, but maybe comes to a point where Nora is like, “Okay, we want to watch Bluey right now.” 

Renee: It’s a little bit of both. We’re parenting. We have our daughter. We’re watching kid shows, but there is also the other side of it where honestly it makes me better at my job to be married to someone like Jon. The education I get from him with how much he likes pro wrestling. It’s impossible for me to not also kind of be under his learning tree and understand the business from so many different angles I may not necessarily think of if it weren’t for him. We get to do a little bit of both. I don’t think it gets fully shut off, but it’s about finding that balance between watching Bluey and everything else we watch. 

Jon: I try to compartmentalize to a degree. I dial it down. When I come home, and my daughter is awake, then I’m doing that. My phone will be shut off, and I don’t want to think about anything else. I’m just doing that. I don’t want to have my mind in two places at once. Once she is asleep, or I’m on the road or something, then I can dial in. I don’t watch wrestling on TV here. There is no wrestling around my house. We focus on one thing at a time. 

Nora is turning 5 this year. Is she starting to understand what mom and dad do for a living? 

Renee: Oh yes. She is very into it. She has really gotten into watching women’s wrestling, which is really fun for me to get to show her some stuff. She doesn’t love watching dad wrestle so much because it’s much scarier. It’s cool to see her soak it all in. One day she is like, “Mommy, I want you to teach me everything about broadcasting.” The next day she’ll tell me she wants to be a wrestler like dad. I think she has a good comprehension of what we both do. Maybe not the gravity of it or the magnitude, but she has an understanding. It is funny being a parent and watching your kids soak up that environment. I sort of pull myself out of it wondering what her first memories are going to be of walking into the women’s locker room with me, and there are all these amazing female athletes and characters, and all the people who see backstage getting there earlier in the day. She sees the stage and set and how the show comes together. I wonder if she is going to think about that when she is older. 

You don’t interact much onscreen. It seems when Jon does interviews, it’s not with you. Is that by design? Do you want to separate real-life from a story-telling perspective? How do you approach the onscreen dynamic? 

Jon: I don’t even really think about it. If something that came up that was weird, it would be obvious to everybody before you did it. It’s not really a thing. 

Renee: It’s not something we actively discuss like, “You do this. I do that. We don’t intersect here.” If we see something that stands out that feels like it doesn’t quite go, we move in a different direction. It’s not what we have to lead with. 

Jon: It’s a non-issue. 

Renee: I will say I do love doing those Continental Classic hits. It’s so funny for me because we started doing that before Jon became the Continental Classic Champion. Now to be out there so much for his entrances, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love getting to soak up that POV a little more. I love to tell those little stories and provide those background details and what not. I like to add that to the broadcast. There is that human side that is really fun when he is coming out there. You see the crowd react to him, and I’m waiting for him to jump over the barricade during his entrance. 

Jon, you’re an AEW workhorse where you’re wrestling for a lot of shows. Is that leading by example for you? You’re also getting the chance to work different styles where it’s a luchador one week, hardcore wrestler another, and [Konosuke] Takeshita at Revolution. 

Jon: It may be one opponent one week and another wildly different opponent another week. I’m totally into that. You’re constantly learning. There is no end point to this. I’m realizing that more and more as time goes on. You just keep getting better and learning and evolving or you die. The more you learn and the more doors in your mind open up, the more you realize how infinite this is and how you can keep getting better and growing. The more that I learn and I get better, the more I can teach that to someone else. Then it’s like we’re both learning at the same time. Leading by example for me is like having an open mind. If you think you know everything, you’re full of sh*t. 

Nobody knows everything. We’re learning every day. I go in with an open mind. The fans pay their money and I think about it from that perspective a lot. I think in the last year or so where this phenomena has happened where I’ve completely forgotten we’re on television because I’m so locked into what we’re doing in the arena. I forget we’re on television and there is an outside world watching this. People pay their money by buying a ticket, parking, they give you their time and money to come to the show and have a good time. You owe it to them to bust your ass. Every single time whether you’re in the ring for two minutes, 10 minutes or whatever it is, it’s full-on maximum effort. That’s what we do. 

How is it being in what feels like this new phase of the Death Riders? 

Jon: One of the things I’m most proud of is we’ve built a really good culture with our team. Even people who are more our opponents in competition and opponents on the opposite side of the ring, they are still a part of the team in a sense. It’s the old saying if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. To me, I get so much satisfaction seeing other people grow as they evolve in their journey in wrestling. I remember going on a crazy ride where one day I’m a nobody and next day I’m on this crazy ass ride. To be able to take other people along with me has been really gratifying. Usually, the stuff I’m looking for is not the things others are looking for or care about. I’m always looking at little stuff other people don’t look at or pay attention to. I’m like, “f*ck yeah” when I see someone is leveling up and their understanding of this is leveling up. The work ethic is one of the key things for us. We like to be active. The only way you get better at this is to do it a lot. I would wrestle every night if they let me. I would also step aside and let the other guys wrestle because I want them to wrestle too. We’d be in the ring every night if we could. 

Renee, what’s it like for you to see this next generation in broadcasting?  

Renee: I love to be able to help the other girls. That’s something I didn’t have as much time to do when I was in WWE. With the time I spent there, and the things I learned there and the experience I have for the duration of my career, I love being able to help these other girls out. Someone like Lexi [Nair] I think has grown so much. She is so great and awesome to work with. She always has a good attitude. She always wants to learn more. She will be doing Ring of Honor tapings till whatever time in the morning. She wants to be there and get better. 

It’s the same for Arkady Aura. I’m not a ring announcer, so I can’t contribute with that, but with all the prep she does wanting to get all the names right and pronunciations right, especially when you have all these wrestlers coming in. You have guys from CMLL and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, so you want to make sure you’re on your game with that stuff. To see these girls grow and develop, I love that. Even with the WWE side, to see what Jackie Redmond has been able to do over there. Her and I go way back, so it’s really fun for me to see her in that role at WWE. 

You’ve also been able to explore some creative projects outside the norm like working with RJ City from preshow panels to AEW Meal & a Match. That has to be fun.

Renee: Being able to expand with RJ, that guy is such a Swiss army knife with what he can do. Whether it’s hosting stuff, writing stuff, working on different pitches or ideas. We just put out an “Everything You Need to Know About AEW,” putting people up to speed on AEW in case you’re a new fan and don’t know what the entry point might be. It’s cool to be able to see things from POV and different topics we could go with. It’s a new concept, so we’re fleshing it out as we go. Even doing Meal & a Match, that was something he and I had spoken about a long time. To see that come to fruition, I wish we could have done more with it, but it’s the nature of the business and how it works. Maybe we’ll get to explore that again at some point. It’s cool to wear the different hats I’ve been able to wear in my career, especially in AEW where we have the creativity to do that. It’s really fulfilling to do all those things and feel you are actually contributing to make stuff better. 

Jon: The thing with her is she has the real television credibility and experience that us goofball wrestlers don’t have usually. From being around and working with people she has worked with, she has the real old school wrestling street cred credibility you can’t buy as well. She is higher up on the food chain with her old school wrestling street cred than most people. You can’t buy that. But then she has real-life television, makes things sharp and professional and can yell at people and get people on their marks. 

Renee: [laughs] To what Jon was saying earlier too, I do have all this experience, but I never think I know it all. There is still more to learn. The game changes. As much as I love being able to help other young girls and their talents in different situations, it’s also cool for me to learn from them with how things are changing and operating. It’s funny when that starts to happen where you’ve been doing it long enough you can’t see these changes and say, “When I came up, we did it this way.” Now things are changing. You never know it all. It’s that love of the game. I love what I do. I’ve chosen this career path. I want to do it for a very long time. I want to be old in sequence f*ck’in blazers where people are trying to pull me off the stage with one of those old hooks. It’s being able to adapt and enjoying it and knowing each time a camera is in your face to do the absolute best you can.

I think that’s true with AEW’s roster across the board in mentality. We’re coming up to Revolution this weekend. Jon, you’re Death Riders member Marina [Shafir] has one of her biggest matches against “Timeless” Toni Storm. That has to make you proud knowing how hard she worked.

Jon: It’s really something to have earned a match like that as Marina has the hard way. By just sheer dirt under your fingernails, elbow grease effort over the last 18 months or so. I don’t think there is anyone maybe in wrestling that has the disciplined approach like her. She is a real athlete and treats this like a professional athlete. The way she trains and approaches everything. She has come in with a complete student mindset every single day. We learn so much from her because she has so much knowledge. It’s a real melting pot of ideas on our team. It also motivates me like a mother*cker and gives me a kick in the ass. If she gets there early to train, I’ll be there early to train. I have to keep up with her. She is a Mustang, so Toni Storm is in for a hell of a ride on Sunday. 

Renee: Just to play devil’s advocate, even though I love Marina and think she is incredible, Toni Storm has been so consistently incredible. To see this evolution of who she is and what she brings to the ring and what she brings to the entire company. She is such a star. She nails it every time. While she is this bigger-than-life, bold character, her matches are insane. I can not wait to see these two kill each other on Sunday. 

Is there a show you watch together when Nora is asleep? 

Renee: Well, I just finished watching Tell Me Lies. That was a solo venture. When Jon was gone for a bit, I started watching it and finished the tail end of it when he was home. He was reading a book and would look up and catch some of the things I’m trying to explain, who the characters are and what their backstory is. I’m watching the Love Story series now. Together, what are we watching together? 

Jon: There are a couple of really good TV shows I can get into, but I generally don’t really like sitting and watching TV anymore. I’ll sit and watch it with her because I just want to just sit and hang out where we’re sitting and spending time together.

So now we know Renee controls the remote. 

Renee: To be fair, this man is so insanely disciplined. We’ve got our daughter, and he is totally focused on her when she is awake. Then when she goes to bed, that’s when he goes to work. Then it’s like we cross paths where I’m doing mom things, and I’m going to sit on the couch to watch a show while he goes down to the gym, working on his mobility, responding to phone calls and texts. He is kind and tries to appease me when we get to hang out a little bit before he goes off to work. I’m good for an episode of a show per night. I have been hogging the remote a bit. 

Renee, we still have to get you on the Hallmark movie. 

Renee: I have been trying! You have no idea how hard I’ve been trying to make this Hallmark thing to happen. Man, they are hard to get in with. 

Jon: Wait, I have the answer to the first question about making marriage work. You have to put time into hanging out together. I don’t want to watch some stupid f*ck’in show, but I want to hang out. I put in the effort. Really, to answer your first question, the key is like if you’re at work and caught up and have nothing else to do, there is always cleaning. That needs to be done. Like pick up a f*ck’in broom. But the key is sex. If you don’t know what you should be doing, you may as well be having sex. You can’t have too much. 

Renee: This is TV Insider. 

Jon: I don’t care. People have sex on TV. Sex is a big thing on TV. 

Renee: That is true. 

Jon: The office can’t be too spotless is all I’m saying. 

AEW Revolution, March 15, 7/6c, Pay-Per-View & HBO Max Pay-Per-View

AEW Dynamite, Wednesdays, 8/7c, TBS & HBO Max

AEW Collision, Saturdays, 8/7c, TNT & HBO Max