Shafir was looking to improve so she reached out to Moxley.
The group known as The Death Riders (Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli, PAC & Marina Shafir) are in possession of the AEW World and World Trios Championships.
Shafir carries the World Title in a briefcase on behalf of the champion Jon Moxley. She spoke about how her being aligned with Moxley came about as she talking to Chris Jericho for a recording of Talk Is Jericho. Shafir wanted to improve in wrestling so she asked Moxley to help her.
So, I don’t know if you remember months before, there was a leak to the dirt sheets. Somebody was leaking sh*t and we would have those meetings before the show. Remember that? One of those meetings concluded with, ‘Hey, we’re trying to figure out what indie shows we can work with because I know you guys need reps. Let us know if you need help with that. I know a lot of you guys just need development and just let us know,’ and after the meeting was done, everybody f*cking left and I just went right up to (Jon) Moxley and I was like, ‘I need help. I need help. I know I got something, but if I don’t get help with it, it’ll just be wasted, and maybe you can help me.’ We exchanged info and I got connected with Sami Callihan and then Matt Farmer who runs DEFY and I just started doing shows, you know? And after each match, having a skull session and just watching it back and understanding what little shifts need to be made. Moments, transitions. ‘Okay, Marina, you really need to work on this right here for real.’ Just urgency or cadence, and then he just started mentoring me, and it just kind of evolved into where I am now. I’m not a glittery girl. I wish I had the capacity to be sparkly and showboaty. I wanna f*ck girls up and that’s why people appreciate me. Because I have that, oh f*ck, this girl’s about to get f*cked up and not very many girls have that aura about them and I hate that word. But I had to embrace it because that is what, visually, the main thing people saw about me. I can’t help my Slovic b*tch face. I can’t help my big ass shoulders and ability to take a f*cking beating and get back up every time, and that’s what was needed for this.
Next up on the docket for the group is that Moxley will be defending the AEW World Championship against Cope at Revolution on March 9th.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Talk Is Jericho with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
