Gabe Kidd on His Emotional Moment With Jon Moxley At AEW’s PAC Tribute Show & His Frustrations With NJPW Officials After Kenny Omega Match In 2025

A recent episode of the Talk Is Jericho podcast featured Gabe Kidd as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Kidd’s thoughts about him holding in his emotions during the day of AEW’s tribute show to the late “PAC” Benjamin Satterley.

“It’s still so fresh and there would be periods of time where he would go back to England and he just wouldn’t be at the show. So it almost still feels like that now and it didn’t, especially at the tribute show, it didn’t — I’m holding in this emotion all day because I know if Ben could see us, if he was there and could communicate with us, he’d be like, ‘Don’t mope around all day, you’ve got a job to do.’ That’s the backbone of the Death Riders. Regardless of the situation, we’re at work, we have to put on a show. There are people that have saved up for years for this, to come and watch this. It’s the effort. That’s the whole thing about the Death Riders, this is a gift, this is a blessing. Don’t take it lightly.”

Kidd also gave his thoughts about him letting his emotions out after competing in the main event 10-man tag team match and sharing an emotional special moment with Jon Moxley.

“I’m holding in all this emotion and then we do the match and it just comes out. I just dropped to my knees and I feel someone wrap their arms around me. I look up, it’s Mox. I’m not going to share what we said to each other because that’s between me and him, but he said something to me that’s just real. That’s always been my approach to wrestling, is just be real. Be who you are. Don’t change yourself and try and act like someone else. We’re watching the video and the realization hits of why we’ve had this whole day and this match, just broke down because the Death Riders are family and before this were, but now more than ever. That’s a bond that’s never going to be broken. If it ever gets suggested, nobody’s going to do it because there are things that are more than wrestling. Especially now. We have to keep going for him because if it was anyone else, he would’ve done the exact same thing. He would’ve put 100% effort in and he would’ve showed up to work. He did when Andy passed away, cause he was so hurt by that man. That was his guy.”

Kidd also gave his thoughts about his frustrations with NJPW officials near the end of his time with the company over how they had told him during his recovery that if he became popular, NJPW would put him in IWGP World Championship opportunities only to not deliver on it.

“And I said to New Japan on the phone, I said, ‘Give me a title match against Okada. Like, give me an IWGP title match. I can’t rest until I have an IWGP title match.’ And they told me on the phone, they said, ‘If you become popular,’ cuz these times I’m just a young lion, they’re like, ‘If you become popular, we’re going to put you in those situations.‘

But then it got halfway through the year, and there were reasons at that time I wanted to be in America more, and I was just like I have given you everything through all the times you’ve disrespected me all the times you’ve not seen me as the position I put myself in that position. I did that. I had grown men crying, and I still to this day haven’t had an IWGP title match.”

Kidd also gave his thoughts about how after his match against Kenny Omega at Wrestle Dynasty 2025, he believed he had met those expectations and how when he offered to represent NJPW on an international scale to Bushiroad CEO Takaaki Kidani, he was sent to spend months wrestling and feuding with HOUSE OF TORTURE instead.

“You told me that at my lowest, at my most vulnerable, you told me that and you didn’t follow through on your word. And the only reason I’m going there now is for me. It’s not to go back and do shows, but not for the feeling, because I don’t have that same feeling anymore because of the emotional connection I had to it.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com, F4WOnline.com