Jon Moxley describes how he decided to make the viral video that went public on the night his WWE contract expired and who helped him.

On midnight of the night Dean Ambrose's contract expired and mysterious video showed up on the Jon Moxley Twitter account. It was a video of Ambrose in a prison, breaking out, running from a dog, wrapping himself up in barbed wire and more. The video received millions of views and it got everyone talking.

Was this video produced by WWE? Was it from AEW? Was this Ambrose and if so, how did he have time to do this video while under contract with WWE? There was conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory out there but Moxley himself wasn't talking.

That is, until he did an interview this week with Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho. 

Towards the end of the interview, Moxley talks about the video and how he wanted to make something that would drop the exact moment his contract ended. Most of the people he knew that could help him produce a high-quality video worked in WWE and, clearly, he could tell anyone. So he hired a friend Sick Nick Mondo.

Mondo is a legend in death matches and crazy hardcore-type matches but he's also a freelance filmmaker. Mondo told Ambrose he could help, sent him the script ideas and away they went.

Filming only during his time off from WWE, they would do long shoots until the early hours of the morning. He hired actors, had sets built and spent about $8,000 to produce the video. He rented heavy duty and high-quality cameras and hired a firm to help him time the post so it would drop on Twitter at exactly midnight.

It worked too. The video was a viral smash hit that made Moxley and immediate star.

What This Means

Ambrose was already a big deal in wrestling but this video made him the hottest free agent in wrestling. When he showed up in AEW this past weekend, the fans went nuts. In part, this video helped build the anticipation of it, even though AEW had nothing to do with it.

He's made another video about his trip to New Japan and it sounds like he's working on a full-length feature type project too.

Related: Smart Marks of Wrestling Podcast - Ep. 11 - Double or Nothing, Moxley Interview