Athena Reveals She Rejected IMPACT Wrestling To Sign With AEW

After six years with the company, Athena was released by WWE in November 2021. The former Ember Moon didn't immediately sign with another major promotion, though, and she instead performed on the independent wrestling scene before she debuted in AEW at Double or Nothing in May 2022.

Athena reflected on the time between her WWE release and AEW debut and The Fallen Goddess admitted she kept putting off interest from IMPACT Wrestling as she felt like she wanted to sign with Tony Khan's promotion.

"When I left WWE, that was the one thing I wanted to do, I wanted to figure out a way to get to AEW. When I walked out of that building, I thought, 'How in the blue hell do I get ahold of Tony Khan?' Between my rep and everything, we had kind of been in talks in December to see if there was interest. During my 90-day situation where I couldn't do anything, 'Ah, just kind of threw away the dream job. Do I want to wrestle anymore?'" All of these requests came in from the indies of, 'We want you to come do our show, we want you at our show.' 'Well this is new. I remember having to run to everyone else to get a booking.'" Athena said on Talk is Jericho.

"All these old promotions that I used to work for were like, 'Hey come work with us. Come do this.' 'I don't know man.' I remember this promoter at Warrior Wrestling goes, 'Whatever match you want, I'll pay your rate, you get to pick your opponent and who you want.' 'Thunder Rosa.' I threw out a name because I recently met her and she was awesome. I went down to Mission Pro and worked out to see if I still wanted to wrestle. She got me some really good girls to roll around with. We went broadway, 30 minutes, and it was so much fun. I was so emotional after because it was like, 'I thought I was going to throw this all away again.' It got the bug going and that's when I told my rep, 'Let's do it, if he wants me let's do it,'" she continued.

"It became, IMPACT wanted me, there was interest at AEW but we could never get ahold of Tony because he's so busy. IMPACT would be like, 'Hey, hey girl, hey.' 'Yeah, yeah, I know, hold on.' My friends would be like, 'Girl, I heard you're coming here.' 'We've not talked to them. We only said, hey, we'll talk to you next week.' It became this weird, where do I go? What do I do? I had two companies showing interest and it was like, 'I think I want to go to AEW. I have friends at IMPACT, but I want to do AEW because I've had my eye on it for so long.' Fast forward to May, it happened so quickly. Tony called my rep, 'Let's do it.' Within the next week, I was on a plane to Las Vegas."

After initially being involved in a feud with Jade Cargill and later the Interim AEW Women's World Title picture, Athena switched her attention to Ring of Honor and she is now the reigning ROH Women's World Champion following a win over Mercedes Martinez at Final Battle on December 10.

H/T to Fightful