Athena Reveals why she Signed With AEW
Athena made her All Elite Wrestling debut at Double or Nothing, surprising the crowd and coming out to meet TBS Champion Jade Cargill face to face. Since then she's been aligning herself with Anna Jay and Kris Statlander, and a one-on-one clash with Cargill could signal the start of an AEW Championship reign. In a new interview with Steve Fall for NBC Sports Boston, Athena revealed what led to her signing with AEW after she was released by WWE, and though she was excited to jump into AEW, there was a time when she wondered if she wanted to stay in the world of wrestling.
"I feel like it was one of those things as soon as I got released [by WWE] or mutually parted ways, whichever way you wanna have it there, it was like, 'Man, I don't know how to get in contact with them, but I gotta get in contact with them,' and I told my agent, I was like, 'Hey, I'm really interested in going there. I really want to go there,' you know," Athena said. "It's kind of like a combination of, we reached out and they reached back, and it was like a six month 'Are we interested?'"
"Are you interested, because I think when I left [WWE], I didn't really know if I wanted to continue wrestling," Athena said. "I just knew that like, I loved and enjoyed watching the AEW product at home, watching the pay-per-views watching just everything. I'm like, 'Oh, this looks like so much fun,' and then I'd be like, 'I don't know, I don't know.' So, I had a couple matches on the indies and just those blew up, and it just getting kept getting more and more attention. And I think like, we finally just kind of hit the double tap on the phone call and it was like, 'Yeah, let's let's figure out something.'"
Shortly after her non-compete ended Athena showed up in Warrior Wrestling and would eventually become Warrior Wrestling Women's Champion by defeating Thunder Rosa. Since then she's continued to defend the Title in addition to her work in AEW, and she seems quite happy with how things are going these days.
Her current adversaries are Cargill and The Baddies, which consists of Kiera Hogan and Red Velvet. Statlander, Athena, and Jay have all had more run-ins with Cargill's team over the past few weeks, and we'll have to wait and see if Athena is the one that can start to topple Cargill's dominance.
What do you want to see from Athena in AEW? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
H/T SEScoops