In a recent appearance on the “Sunday Night’s Main Event” podcast, ROH Women’s World Champion Athena discussed pitching a “Minion Graduation” segment for ROH TV to AEW/ROH President Tony Khan, which continued her story with Billie Starkz.
The segment led to a match between the two women at ROH Final Battle 2023 which Athena won.
Athena said, “None of this would happen without TK. It was really awesome to be able to be given the ball and the faith is given to me each and every week when I go to work. Tony and I work hand in hand with creating minion stuff. I remember telling him, ‘We need a minion graduation.’ He’s like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ I go, ‘Yeah, we need a minion graduation.’ He’s like, ‘Tell me how this is going to go. I am immensely intrigued.’ He loved the idea. I had my first promo in a very long time out there. I remember sweating. I was like, ‘I’ve been doing one takes backstage. I got this in the bag.’ It’s just an honor to be me.”
On a recent edition of the “AEW Unrestricted” podcast, Rachael Ellering revealed how her father, WWE Hall of Famer Paul Ellering, didn’t want her to become a wrestler.
She said, “A lot of people assume multi-generational talents have all grown up around wrestling and I had a total opposite experience of that. My dad did not let us watch it, he didn’t take us to shows. When I told him I wanted to be a wrestler he was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ He’s like, ‘You have scholarships for college, go get your degree and we will kind of talk about it later’. I think he thought it was just a phase that I was maybe going to grow out of. I did go to college, I did get my bachelor’s degree, I didn’t phone it in, I graduated with Latin and National honors, so I did the thing … But I made my degree so wrestling-centric it’s a joke.”
Rachael is currently part of the ROH roster.
