AEW star Athena recently spoke with SEScoops correspondent Steve Fall for NBC Sports Boston about her road to becoming “all elite.”
“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.’ 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. 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.’”
Preparing for Double or Nothing Debut
Athena also spoke about her AEW debut at last month’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view.
“I get in at like eight, nine o’clock in the morning, and I was like, you know what, I’m not gonna go to the baggage claim for my airline. I’m gonna go to the other one, right, and now I’m telling all my secrets, so now I get lost, I get very obviously lost and turned around because I’m terrible at navigating airports, and I end up in the big baggage claim and all I see is piles and piles of AEW fans like stalking out the baggage claims with their binoculars.
I’m 5’1″ so I can blend so I get in the biggest crowd that I possibly can and I get in the middle and I’m like head down like I have like my glasses on my mask on, I’m trying to hide.
So they put me at a different hotel that isn’t the TV hotel. I get there, my hotel has been given away, so I’m sitting in the lobby and I’m like, ‘Oh this is weird,’ and like the travel team was like, ‘Oh no, this is like, they tried to call, they tried it they were like, ‘Hey, we bought this room day before, blah blah blah, and they’re like, ‘Well, you should have called,’ and I’m sitting here like, ‘Oh no, uh, someone is going to notice me, because I was in that lobby for like an hour or two as we were trying to figure it out. I’m just head down, just like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the worst, you know, and eventually, they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re sending a car for, you we’re gonna put you up at the hotel where everyone else is at,’ and I’m like, ‘How is that going to work?’” because once again AEW fans, or just wrestling fans in general, are really good about ruining surprises for themselves.
‘So they take me through like the basement level and they put my room name under someone else, and we are like, ‘Aright, go up the elevator, you’re on this floor,’ and I get in the elevator and it stops on the lobby level, and three AEW fans get in like they had the Jericho Society shirts and I’m like, ‘How?’ and I’m just sitting, they’re just like, and I remember they went to turn and look at me, and I start coughing and they’re like, “Oh, oh, oh god, please don’t get that on me,’ and I was like so they totally know who I am.”
Check out Steve Fall’s exclusive interview with AEW star Athena: