Don’t let tourists tell you that Texas is a monolith. The rocky shores of Corpus Christi don’t align with the green groves of the hill country that stretches between Austin and San Antonio. The dry, sandy flatlands of El Paso don’t reflect the bustle and bayous that make up the greater Houston area. When outsiders say “Texas,” what they really mean is Dallas; with its grandiose skyline, stellar steakhouses, world-famous football team and affinity for the arts and history, Dallas is the embodiment of the “everything’s bigger” mantra. And as AEW descends on the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for its behemoth All In 2025 week, one of the area’s top exports will look to continue her years-long dominance over the women’s division.
That’s because Ring of Honor Women’s Champion Athena is one of the very best wrestlers in the world, and she’s looking to put a stamp on her status in front of her home crowd this Friday.
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After almost 20 years in the industry, Athena, 36, is at her creative and competitive apex, and is earning the highest praise for both in real time. The “Forever ROH Champ” is quirky, vindictive and hyper focused on her historic 900-plus-day run as the Ring of Honor Women’s Champion, and is hoping to stretch that to quadruple digits. To do so, she’ll first need to defeat challenger Thunder Rosa at Supercard of Honor 2025, ROH’s annual mega-event that this year sets the table for AEW’s biggest show of 2025.
For Athena, the year 2023 specifically put the spotlight on her, as any restrictions she may have had at previous points were stripped off, and she was launched out into the universe as one of the standard-bearers of women’s professional wrestling in the United States. “I try to be the best wrestler, entertainer that I can possibly be,” she told Uncrowned ahead of Friday’s event. “I think a lot of the conversation that happened in 2023 is because, for the first time, people were getting to see me be me on an international platform, not only just as someone on the roster, but as the ‘forever’ ROH champion. People got to see how much hard work I actually do put into everything, if that makes sense.”
That work began in 2007, all over Texas and sometimes just outside of the great state. It’s a six-and-a-half-hour drive from Athena’s native Garland to Jonesboro, Arkansas (closer to eight in Athena’s old “Putt Putt” car, a nod to the title character from the children’s computer game series). But early in her training, Athena would make that trip biweekly to train under the watchful eye and heavy hands of former WWE Women’s Champion, Jazz. During Jazz’s tenure, WWE’s women’s division was focused more on presentation than in-ring competition, but her toughness and ferocity in the face of that caught Athena’s eye. “I craved to be different in a time where everyone was trying to be cute,” she says.
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“If you want to do that, I have no problem with that. But I wanted to be a wrestler. I wanted to be a pro-wrestler, and Jazz was a pro-wrestler.”
Originally trained by Universal Wrestling Federation legend Skandor Akbar, Athena sought out training from different minds and styles, spending time learning under Booker T, Lance Archer and Monty Brown. But Jazz, along with husband Rodney Mack, was living proof that Athena could do things her way and find success. “[To see] a woman that is doing all the things or did all the things that you want to do and push those boundaries and push those barriers, it’s really inspiring,” she says. “And it’s really cool now to see some of the younger generation be like, ‘Yo, Jazz — Jazz is my favorite wrestler.’”
Outside of helping to build Athena’s brands of bruisings and beatdowns, Jazz, among others, wanted to make sure that Athena didn’t conform in order to perform. Athena liked tabletop games, cosplay and comics, but would put those things away to fit in early on. “She goes, ‘People are going to want to change you. Don’t. Keep doing you,'” Athena recalls. “And that’s something that I heard a lot from people like Mark Henry, people like Jazz … and I wish I would have listened to that advice sooner versus going with the flow of my first round of the indies, because I think I would have stuck out a lot more.”
Athena has been on a tear under the AEW umbrella. (Photo via AEW)
(Ricky Havlik)
Athena spent almost a decade on the independent scene plying her trade before catching the eye of the original Ring of Honor ownership in 2013. After then signing with WWE in 2015, she developed into Ember Moon, a cloaked, focused, but feral competitor in the vein of “Mortal Kombat’s” Outworld femme fatales. “The War Goddess” was a fresh act in the world of models and mean girls, and went on to produce some of the NXT’s best matches to date, most notably in 2017 against Asuka at Takeover: Orlando and Takeover: Brooklyn III. She held the NXT Women’s Title for 140 days, before moving to WWE’s main roster. Where NXT’s willingness to embrace and emphasize unique women’s characters like Moon, Asuka and Shayna Baszler created great matches and moments, “WWE Raw” and “SmackDown” seemed to water down the intensity and style Moon had crafted, and she was quickly lost in the shuffle.
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Athena was ultimately released from WWE in the winter of 2021, but quickly found her perfect landing spot six months later with AEW. While WWE is clearly professional wrestling’s largest platform, AEW could offer the progressive style and dream match opportunities that wrestling junkies like Athena coveted. She found a kindred spirit in owner Tony Khan, who quickly made her the face of his revamped Ring of Honor imprint. “I tell him that all the time — I’m a sicko,” she says. “I love wrestling. I still watch pro wrestling. I’ll watch 14 hours of PWG, old ROH from 2003 to 2006, which is my era.
“I love that pro wrestling, in general, is always consistently changing, consistently evolving. There’s always something to learn. There’s always a new trick to do. There’s always a new move to invent. When I first started wrestling, I never wanted to do the same thing two days in a row.”
Where she’d been a mostly silent, enigmatic warrior in NXT/WWE, competing in Ring of Honor — and winning its Women’s Championship — gave Athena the chance to really put her personality on display. She attacked referees, she attacked her opponents after matches. She preached this relentless, “it’s over when I say it’s over” mantra to Billie Starkz and Lexi Nair, recruiting them as her “Minions in Training.” The self-proclaimed “Minion Overlord” was part lifestyle coach, part drill sergeant to the pair and her unnamed students alike. With every win, she became more and more protective of her title and legacy, as her competition became stiffer and stiffer. She made history alongside Willow Nightingale as the first pair of women to headline a ROH pay-per-view, defeating Willow via submission at Death Before Dishonor in 2023. Over her almost three-year reign, she’s successfully defended her title against challengers from everywhere in the industry, defeating the likes of Emi Sakura, Hikaru Shida, Vert Vixen and La Catalina, among others. She’s so invested in “forever,” that Athena started looking across the table at other champions and decided she needs their plates too.
While they never faced one another one-on-one in WWE, Athena and Mercedes Moné finally went to war in the semifinals of AEW’s Owen Hart Cup tournament this past April. Moné got the better of Athena with a less-than-legal rollup, and Athena carries that loss with the same weight as her record-setting reign.
“That woman has teed me off on a level that only people at a family reunion seeing that one cousin that you hate would understand,” Athena says.
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“She’s one of the best in the world. I have nothing but great things to say about her — with the exception that she pulled my tights to beat me. And that is unforgivable. And that left me feeling embarrassed, defeated and angry. And I do not like feeling any of those things in any type of way. So in return, when that moment comes, whenever it will be, because I truly do not know, when that opportunity comes to knock, I’m going to knock her on her ass with all her dollar-store sequins.”
The ROH champ has a mean streak the size of, well, Texas, and she’s planning on bringing that — and so much more — to Arlington’s ESports Stadium. The venue hosted Athena’s 2024 title defense over Queen Aminata, and she immediately felt the local support, maybe even to the point of overconfidence, yet she still managed to showcase, shine and extend her time as top dog. “It’s my home, my friends, my family, the crowd,” Athena says.
“I told [Queen Aminata] before we went out, I said, ‘I’m a God here.’ And she was like, ‘Whatever, I’m taking that championship away.’ She walks out there — and then I walk out and she heard the crowd, and you can see it on her face, like, ‘Oh, I did not understand.’
“I’ve wrested in Austin. I’ve wrestled down south in San Angelo. I’ve wrestled everywhere you can wrestle in Texas. Texas is my home. … For me to wrestle in Texas is for me to put an entire state on my back along with Ring of Honor, along with the women’s division, and I’m carrying us to the best night ever.”
Athena and Mercedes Moné have unfinished business. (Photo via AEW)
(Ryan Loco)
Just like her title reign, Athena does not stop. With AEW’s encouragement, she’s finally gotten to test her skills against the lightning-fast fighters of Stardom, one of her major career goals. “I used to watch Akayo Hamada, Bull Nakano, Manami Toyota, and then there’s countless others,” she says. “I used to be a really big fan of the Speed Championship at Stardom. I don’t know if I can keep up with AZM and these girls now because they move faster than The Flash. But man, I just became super obsessed with that division because it was everything that I felt we didn’t have as far as a cruiserweight division would go for women. But I became obsessed. Io Shirai, the Shirai sisters … I was like a kid in a candy store. It was my first day of school. And they treated me with so much respect and kindness.
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“I was so appreciative of just being in the arenas with these women. I don’t think that they knew how much it meant to me that I got to finally go to Japan.”
When she’s not wrestling, she’s watching wrestling, and when she’s not watching wrestling, she’s coaching, helping talents like fellow Dallas native Maya World reach that next level. “I don’t think anyone wants it as hard as me,” Athena says. “People say, ‘I’m the first one to show up. I’m the last one to leave.’ I’m like, yeah, but I eat, live and breathe this. I go to work on a Wednesday, I come home on Thursday. I run training on Friday. I’m either prepping to go back to work or prepping to run a weekly wrestling show at home. On Sunday, that’s my first day off, I’m normally playing ‘Dungeons & Dragons.’ But then Monday, Tuesday, I’m training again. And it goes on and on and on and on between coaching and running a weekly wrestling show while also being a wrestler and also wrestling one to two days a week with AEW, Ring of Honor, whatever is needed of me.”
What she may lack in sleep, Athena makes up for with the confidence that comes from years of preparation. Athena was given the keys to the kingdom that is Ring of Honor, and she’s done her damndest to push forward as its top champion. And like the good Texas host that she is, Athena is inviting us all in to share her wealth. “I am putting that hard work out there because that is what the people demand. That is what they deserve,” she says.
“I just put my heart on a pedestal when it comes to being in the ring. I used to have this saying, ‘Make art out of war.’ Every match I have, I try to paint a masterpiece. It has to have the right flow, the right color, the right aesthetic, the right setting. But that’s just something I’ve always done. Am I the best in the world? Sure, I’ll go ahead and say it. I’m better than everyone in the world. But when it comes to the outward presentation, I’m just trying to be the best me on a platter.”