Before Athena could truly blossom, the seeds of Ember Moon were sown.
ROH Women’s Champion Athena has had an expansive career in professional wrestling, dating back to early days on independent scene. After racking up an impressive resume on the indies, she earned a contract with wrestling’s biggest franchise: WWE. Ember Moon soon made her presence known as the mysterious, dark “Shenom” on the company’s developmental programming of NXT, and eventually, the main roster.
In a recent appearance on Talk Is Jericho, the former NXT Women’s Champion spoke about the original idea behind the character of Ember Moon. “When I looked at the rosters and stuff like that, at that time it was like, ‘What can I do to stand out? What can I do to be different?’ So, I kept pitching — I was doing a Game of Thrones gimmick on the indies toward the end. I had like banners and some minion come out and I’m walking out, I had a sword. I was like, ‘I want to do that here,'” she recalled.
WWE originally turned down the idea, claiming that it’d “never get over” there. Accordingly, Athena tweaked it to “something a little bit darker,” something a little more supernatural. WWE then pitched the concepts of a vampire, then a werewolf, and a witch, before scrapping them altogether. Athena then embodied a “war Goddess vibe” at the WWE Performance Center, which also didn’t fall in favor of the company.
“[Then] I started doing the, I called it the ‘Anti-Bayley character,'” Athena said. “Where in front of all the cameras it’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’m just so happy to be here. Oh, my gosh, Little Timmy, so happy to see you.’ As soon as the camera turns off, ‘Screw you, little Timmy. No one likes you’. So that’s what I started doing. We were trying to figure out ways to do that in matches. Everyone was like, ‘This is cool. This is money. This is what we need to be.’ Then the vignettes [of Ember] start playing.”
“I had no clue, the first vignette is me, so I get a text from someone at work and they go, ‘Did you watch NXT tonight, And I go, ‘Oh yeah, who’s that cool, creepy mask person?’ and they go, Are you f***ing with me right now?’ And I was like, ‘What? No, who is it?’ And they’re like, ‘It’s you.”
Upon finding out about her new character, Athena quickly pivoted. “Then the second vignette comes out and they only show the eyes or something like that. They turn the eyes red and I go, ‘Oh, I used to wear contacts on the indies’, and they’re like, ‘I think they’re going to try and make this some sort of supernatural entity.'”
Athena then purchases two sets of red contact lenses — one darker pair, and the other, a more vibrant red that ultimately made it onto television. “I remember they were like, ‘Who knows what she is? It’s a mystery to all.’ I was like, ‘I kind of like the What is she? Who knows? Wait and find out.’ Then five, six years passed and we still didn’t know what it was.”
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