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Athena recently spilled the beans on when Tony Khan and AEW contacted her following her surprise WWE release last year.
The former NXT Women's Champion was shockingly shown the door from the Global Juggernaut in November 2021, alongside several other performers. After months of speculation, Athena finally arrived in AEW at Double or Nothing 2022, quickly establishing herself as a major force to be reckoned with.
In a recent interview with NBC Boston Sports, the 33-year-old performer detailed about how her talks with All Elite Wrestling materialized. Athena revealed that she and the promotion were discussing the possibility of working together for six months, but she was unsure if she ever wanted to wrestle anymore.
She added that it was only after wrestling a handful of matches on the indies against Swerve Strickland, Taya Valkyrie, and others that she felt rejuvenated and finally decided to sign with AEW.
“It was like a six-month, ‘Ah, are we interested? Are you interested?’ 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.“I had a couple matches on the indies and those blew up – Shane Strickland, Taya Valkyrie, Mia Yim, and it kept getting more traction. I think like, we finally just kind of hit the double tap on the phone call and it was like, ‘Yeah, let’s figure out something. Let’s do this,” said Athena (H/T - WrestlingInc)
AEW star Athena says her passion for wrestling was "sucked out" in WWE
In the same interview, Athena also spoke about how she was slowly losing her love for the business during the final days of her run in WWE. She explained that wrestling felt more like "work" than fun after a point. Furthermore, Athena stated that working for Vince McMahon's promotion "sucked out" her passion.
"Over the course of like six seven years with WWE it became work. When I like left it was like I got to sit at home for three months and just kind of figure out what I wanted to do and I didn’t necessarily know if I wanted to wrestle again it was just like ah okay because I was afraid that I would go like and it would feel like work and so like on some level yeah I feel like the passion was sucked out," Athena said.
It's safe to say that the former WWE star has plenty of momentum on her side as she gears up to challenge TBS Champion Jade Cargil soon.
