Athena addresses criticism of her new style.
Over the past month, Athena has shifted her in-ring style, working more aggressively and hard-hitting, effectively turning heel in the process. The change started to happen on AEW Dark when she would wrestle local talent and then came to television when she faced Madison Rayne and then attacked Aubrey Edwards.
Appearing on Busted Open Radio, Athena was asked about her shift in style.
"Cause I feel like it," she replied when asked why she changed things up. "Sometimes, nice guys finish last. Sometimes, you get frustrated and it's hard because you're trying to find an opportunity to not get lost in the shuffle because at AEW, there are so many talented women just across the board and it's like, what can you do to stand out? You're asking questions like, why am I stuck in this position? Why is this happening to me? Am I not good? Finally, you have to just say 'eff it.' That's basically what I've done. I'm going to do what I do best. For ten years, before I signed to WWE, I was probably one of the most notorious heels, I worked my entire Indie career as the bad guy. I even got the nickname 'The American Joshi' because of my hard-hitting style. People forget about that. Through my entire TV career, it's something I always wanted to get back to."
Athena continued, addressing the double standard when it comes to hard-hitting matches.
"The girls can hit just as hard as the guys. I have to sit there and see Jon Moxley and (Chris) Jericho and (Wheeler) Yuta, all of these guys hit the tar out of each other. I guarantee you, if I was a man, there wouldn't be as much backlash or anything about that. It's all these old bloated farts that want to sit there and tell us we need to look pretty. They complain when it's a dance, they complain when we hit hard. Get over it. We're out here to be just as good as the guys. We give it our all and put in all this time and effort to hone our craft and I feel we're under-appreciated when we do things like that," she said.
When asked why she thinks people are more critical of the women's division when matches are hard hitting, Athena said, "I honestly don't know. I've been doing this for almost 17 years and no matter how much we as women train or if we have the best match on the card, it's always going to have that stigma of 'they hit too hard, it's too dancey.' People are always critical of the girls because we're still trying to fight for so much. Every time we step into the ring, we're still trying to prove that we belong here, that we're just as good as the guys, if not better. I don't know if anyone else caught Full Gear, but Toni Storm and Jamie Hayter tore down the floor. So what, there was blood. Someone got hit in the face, oh well, it's wrestling. We're not babies. We're not going to go home and cry about it. We're going to continue the match and do what we do best, which is entertain people. Just because one person hits hard, one person is a high-flier, one person likes to do submissions; It's all entertainment at the end of the day. That's all we want to show you. We want to put our heart and art on the platter in the ring and be appreciated for every bump we take, every death-defying move, every time we get hit by a chair, go into a cage, come off the top with a stunner, we want to show you guys our heart and art every time we step into the ring and for some reason, it's so overly criticized and I don't know why, I don't have an answer for that. Every step we take forward, it takes one comment on the internet, to set the entire women's wrestling category back."
Athena is set to challenge Mercedes Martinez for the ROH Women's Championship at ROH Final Battle.
Fans can check out the current lineup for the show by clicking here.
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