The time needed to be right before AEW and Mercedes Martinez could come together.
After appearing at All Out 2019, Mercedes Martinez was seen as a potential signing for a then-upstart AEW to bolster their Women's Division. Unfortunately for them, she signed with WWE in January 2020 and became part of their NXT brand. She would remain with the company until August 2021 when she was released from her contract. A mere few months later in December, she would sign with AEW after helping Jade Cargill defeat Thunder Rosa in the semi-finals of the TBS Championship Tournament.
During the post-show media scrum for ROH Supercard of Honor, Mercedes elaborated on why she didn't join AEW following All Out 2019.
"It wasn’t so much passing up AEW two years ago, it was more or less, I think they were still learning and I was still figuring out where I was going at that time. It just wasn’t the right time," she said.
Tony Khan added on, saying that he wanted to sign Mercedes at the time, but AEW's TV deal hadn't been closed yet and it wasn't until a few weeks later that he would have the revenue to do so.
"To be honest, it was a screwy thing. Here’s what happened. She was working with us and obviously I like Mercedes a lot and I had worked in putting a card together for All Out, she was commonly featured in All Out and I was coaching then and we got along really well, but it was before the TV renewal. I went on the Jericho cruise, pre-pandemic, and it was a very eventful cruise and a lot of stuff happened and Booker T was on the cruise and he brought up to me how I missed the boat on Mercedes and I told him, ‘Mercedes is the kind of person I would like to have in AEW.’ I was using her on a non-contract basis and basically building up to when I had the budget to sign her because, before the TV deal, our revenue stream totally changed you saw me bring in literally dozens of free agents since then. She absolutely would have been one of them, but she signed with the competition before I got the (TV) contract and it was probably within weeks. We worked on the battle royal together, I thought she was awesome, now I’m going to start signing people, we signed a bunch of big names like Brodie Lee, Matt Hard, Sting, FTR, and she absolutely would have been a name I would have been interested in. That was a conversation I had with Booker T on the cruise," Tony said.
At Supercard of Honor, Mercedes defeated Willow to become the Interim ROH Women's Champion. If you missed anything from the show, you can catch up by checking out Fightful's live coverage.
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