Athena shocked the All Elite Wrestling audience with her arrival at Double Or Nothing this year.
The former NXT Women’s Champion entered with an eruption of approval from the Las Vegas crowd. As she stood face to face against TBS Champion Jade Cargill, Athena’s presence immediately made waves. Despite the undoubted pop she received, Athena recently revealed her uncertainty in the reaction she would actually get. In speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Athena admitted her uncertainty heading into her All Elite Wrestling debut in May.
“Fast forward to my AEW debut, I didn’t know what the reaction was going to be. I genuinely didn’t. I have gone into feuds being the good guy and gotten booed out of the arena at the beginning of the match. And then turn the crowd by the tide by the end of it. So, you never know what’s going to happen. And when that place erupted, I remember thinking ‘I’m going to walk out so cool and suave’ and be like ‘I’m here hussy’ and that did not happen. I remember just feeling the energy from the crowd. I started slapping my chest like a maniac, skipping. I’ve never been a ‘rah rah’ babyface by any means. but that day I was. I was like ‘yeah! Let’s go!’.
After arriving to a massive pop, Athena explained why that moment made her especially happy. In addition, she noted her thoughts on being back on a mainstream wrestling platform.
“I just had so much energy and I was just so happy because on some level, you think that people forget about you. You think that they don’t care. It’s hard because I never expect people to react to me. I think that is one of my biggest attributes because I feel like I always have something to prove. And I always want to prove, if you are a fan of Athena, if you were a fan of me in the before times, I earn that, and I’m going to continue to earn that every time I step into the ring.”
“It’s amazing to be back on a mainstream platform,” she admitted. “It’s awesome because people will still call me by a former name and be like ‘no, no, no, that’s wrong. You’re Athena again, baby’. That’s like ‘yeah’ because Athena was the name that I started with when I first started wrestling. Ten years before I even got signed to the other place, but I was on the indies for ten years. I made a name for myself with the name Athena, and now I have all of this extra knowledge and there’s a seven year gap we’re just going to throw out the window right now”
“Now, I’m here at AEW as Athena, kind of reinventing myself, getting the audience to know me as the character that kind of got me to places. So, its really cool. It’s awesome, but it feels like I’m doing it my way, which is even better.”
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