Page 14
09/10/2026
I've been in 2 minds about how to share this .. Part of me was like, just put up the illustration, send it out into the world as it is 🤷🏻♂️ And the other part of me wanted to add a little scribble/'context' to go along with the post ..
So there's that below for anyone that's interested 👇
.. Marina Shafir wasn't the problem. She had all the tools to be a 'star', but something wasn't quite clicking. From a viewer's standpoint, it definitely seemed like she was a little stuck, and quite clearly slipping further + further down the card - sporadic appearances, and minimal live TV reps.
And then, August 2024, Jon Moxley appeared on Dynamite w/Marina by his side, and the start of a new creative direction - and something felt different. The way she carried herself had changed.
.. For this moment to happen, Marina had done something wild - something 'crazy' ..
She'd asked for help 🤯
✋ I tend to talk about this kind of thing like everyone knows who's who - like you're talking about a neighbour with your partner - but for the non-wrestling people out there, AEW wrestler, Marina Shafir, had reached out to Jon Moxley, [probably] 'the Ace' of AEW, as she was trying to navigate taking her career to the next level.Marina's spoken about how she believed in her talent, and knew she didn't want to turn into something she wasn't .. She knew what she needed, but just not necessarily the 'how' she was going to get there - effectively, the crux of making it as a creative 😣 .. Moxley recognised this, and so the work began - indie shows, watching tape, character development ..
Initially, there was no big plan, no Death Riders faction .. Just Mox giving Marina 'one brick every week', and what she did with that brick was up to her. Some weeks she laid it down, and started to see something forming - other weeks she launched "that motherf*cker across the room", frustrated at the process. (These 2 extremes pret-ty much sum up my approach to work 😆)
.. I read this article about Akira Kurosawa years ago, who had the exact same philosophy when it came to script writing - one page, every day. Don't worry about the 120 pages needed to say you've written a script. Today, focus on that one page, and then worry about the next page tomorrow.
→ Just keep moving forward, 1% at a time.
It's the kind of advice I wish I'd actually been given instead of having to figure out for myself 🙄
.. Anyway, bringing it back around to Shafir - and where she's at today .. Love her, hate her, when her music hits, the crowd POPS. We witnessed it first hand over the All In weekend last month - whether it's performing in front of several hundred people, or several thousand - her aura is incredible.
Now - she truly is The Problem Marina Shafir 😤