Athena made art out of war.
Speaking at the ROH Final Battle post-show media scrum, Athena was asked about the reaction to her winning the ROH Women’s Championship. Athena said she knew the title was something she deserved because she worked for it, and she’s not planning on letting the title go any time soon.
“First and foremost, it just means the world to just, I guess be told what you already know. I know I deserve this. I worked hard for this. 17 years, going on 18 years, traveling up and down the road for the hot dog and the handshake. This is my life, and when I decided to part ways with the other company and I looked at AEW, I looked at Ring of Honor, and that was unfinished business for me and my career. I never won a championship in Ring of Honor. Bringing that full circle to now, I have that Ring of Honor championship, and I’m not gonna let it go. This is the moment where everyone else in that locker room that wants an opportunity, they need to step up because I’ve showed what happens when you just kinda don’t care and you do things your own way.”
Athena was then asked why she fits better here than in WWE. She believed that she was a wrestler first, and Tony Khan helped highlight that she could be a wrestler and an entertainer instead of picking one.
“I think a lot of it is, when I started wrestling on the independent scene, I wanted to be a wrestler. I wanted to be seen as a serious competitor that, when people came, it wasn’t about the sex appeal so much or the crazy characters. It was about the crazy athleticism and the chaos that we can create in the ring. I used to have this tagline called ‘Make art out of war.’ That’s exactly what I did. Every single match on the indies, I made out of the chaos that is war of what happens in that four-sided circle. I feel like when I got to the other place, it wasn’t necessarily about the wrestling. It was about the entertainment, which isn’t bad. We tried that, wasn’t a fit for me. But I think a big difference here is that one, I know I’m good in the ring. It’s taken a while, and I think I’ve proven myself to TK and just showed that I can do both. But mostly, for me personally, especially with the Ring of Honor championship, this is a wrestling championship. I am a wrestler. You can think I’m cute, you can think I’m sexy, I don’t care. I’m a wrestler. I’m here to beat you down, put you on the mat, break you like porcelain, and at the end of the day, this [title] is mine, and I’m gonna make sure it stays with me.
“I definitely think that I’m more motivated. I’m constantly trying to push the boundaries of what’s next. I think a lot of that is that Tony trusted me to be able to do that. I feel like sometimes, at the other place, we didn’t get that trust because it’s like, ‘No, you stick to what you know.’ Tony took a risk on me, and I’m immensely grateful that I was able to show what I could do and just be on that platform with all those amazing trashbag wrestlers on Dark and Dark: Elevation, and Rampage and Dynamite, to show him that not only what we do in the ring matters, how we do what we do matters as well. So just having that trust makes me want to do so much more and wants me to push that boundary to maybe get under Tony’s skin a little bit with my chaos.”
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