Athena became the Ring of Honor Women’s Champion by defeating Mercedes Martinez at this weekend’s ROH: Final Battle pay-per-view event. In the post-show media scrum, Athena spoke on a few different topics. Chief among them were how she’d like to be an inspiration to young wrestlers, and what the title victory meant to her.
The Fallen Goddess might have been working as a heel of late, and particularly in her match against Martinez, but there’s no denying her popularity and connection with the crowd.
You can check out some highlights from the media scrum below:
Inspiring young fans and would-be wrestlers: “I think representation is key. Just in general, it doesn’t matter what your ethnicity is. It doesn’t matter how old you are just having a representation. I’m going to make a terrible analogy because I didn’t have this as a kid. I watched up and watched Craig of the Creek one morning with my niece, and one of the coolest things was, like, her seeing someone, a person of color, just like her, having fun with everyone else. I’m not a big person about promoting race or anything like that because I feel like our ability and what we do in the ring speaks for ourselves. We just happen to be that ethnicity. We just happen to be that race. Though I will be a flag bearer for the African-American community, I have no problem with that. I’m black girl magic. I am that nerd girl, that goth girl. I am everything everyone can’t be. But at the end of the day, it does mean a lot to stand up for people that don’t have a voice, whether it be children that are bullied, because I cannot stand that, even though I’m a little bit of a bully of myself. But just to stand up for people that can’t speak for themselves, that means the world to me. And that’s something that I heavily promote on all of my platforms.”
What becoming ROH Women’s Champion means to her: “It’s really cool. I think when I was driving to the building today, it was pretty surreal because I actually used to live at that dormitory right across the street, and very weird because this wasn’t here. This was like an empty parking lot where I got parking tickets all the time, I think. And it’s just really cool to just kind of know that I made the right decision because I actually ended up dropping out of college to become a pro wrestler. So coming to this venue, to this arena at UTA Mavericks, and just being here, not only in front of my parents, in front of that hometown crowd, doing what I do best, calling my shot and winning the ROH Women’s Championship, like, no greater feeling right now.”
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