Owen Hart Foundation Tournament winner Mariah May has quickly become a breakout star in AEW, and her ascent was a long time coming, even before her debut.
In an interview with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated, Tony Khan explained how he reached out to Mariah May in May, months before she ultimately debuted in AEW.
“I reached out and said I had this idea for her in AEW, and that it was a long-term plan,” Tony Khan said. “She responded to me that night, and that’s how it all started.”
“Bryan Danielson and I were flying home from Double or Nothing, and we were talking about wrestling and what stuck out to us, and Bryan asked, ‘Have you seen Mariah?’” Tony Khan continued. “I said I had, and that I was amazed at how, very quickly, she’d become one of the top stars in Stardom. We both agreed she was very polished and charismatic. That’s when I asked Bryan if he’d seen All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard.”
Tony Khan On Mariah May’s Growth
Tony Khan went on to note that he asked May to do something different upon her arrival, and they pushed through some backlash to get to this point. Now, Khan believes that May is one of the biggest stars in wrestling.
“I saw something in her, and I asked her to do something very different when she came to AEW,” Khan said. “There was even some backlash at the beginning when people were pushing back that she came into AEW as this big fan of Toni Storm, which was very different from what she was doing in Stardom. Now we’re going to learn how and why she did all this, and how she became one of the biggest stars in wrestling in less than a year in AEW.”
WrestleZone will have full coverage of AEW Dynamite as it airs on Wednesday.
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