No one knew if Athena would join the company for months.
At a WWE Network podcast, Athena revealed how many months she was out of work before AEW contacted her in a serious manner.
“It was like a six-month, ‘Ah, are we interested? Are you interested?’” Athena stated. “Because I think, when I left, I didn’t know if I wanted to continue wrestling, I just knew that I loved watching the AEW product at home … With some matches on the indies and some character development in AEW, my fan base kept growing. When Shane Strickland and other familiar faces called me up about potential opportunities for me in the future, it felt like ‘Yes! It’s the time! Let’s do this!’”
Athena debuted at AEW‘s Double or Nothing event in 2022 to save Anna Jay and Kris Stadtlander from The Baddies, a group consisting of Jade Cargill, Red Velvet, and Kiera Hogan. After the match that night, Cargill won the TBS Championship. This immediately thrust Athena into a big-time feud considering that Cargill is the inaugural and current TBS Champion.
Athena competed in her first Action Elite Wrestling match, going against one of the Baddies, Hogan. Athena defeated who claimed to be the “Hottest Flame” after almost eight-and-a-half minutes of action. Athena has also competed in the most recent set of AEW “Dark” tapings in Orlando, Florida, defeating Amber Nova.
Athena had wrestled eight matches before debuting with AEW. Most of these matches had been at Warrior Wrestling where she duelled women contracted by AEW, such as Skye Blue and Thunder Rosa. The first big post-WWE match came when she fought against Thunder Rosa in a 30-minute draw in the hopes of winning the Women’s Title on behalf of Warrior Wrestling.
Athena finally won the Warrior Wrestling Women’s Title, after it had been vacated by Thunder Rosa, two and a half months later. Athena defeated Skye Blue and Shazza McKenzie, who competed in two AEW matches in 2019.
Athena, formerly Ember Moon, has spent seven years in WWE and won the NXT Women’s Championship and the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships with her partner at the time, Shotzi. Unfortunately, as the main roster competitor, she experienced regression in her endeavours to find success. The Fallen Goddess and Keith Lee and Carrion Kross, both of whom won the NXT Title while in NXT were released on November 4th, 2021. She was also joined by a new batch of wrestlers that day including Nia Jax, Eva Marie, Lince Dorado, Gran Metalik, Jeet Rama, Katrina Cortez, Trey Baxter, and Jessi Kamea, B-Fab Oney Lorcan, Franky Monet and Scarlett Bordeaux. The latter would go on to sign for AEW under the name AQA following her release.
