Athena talks about whether she sees herself as the Face of ROH, weekly meetings with Tony Khan, her role at Final Battle, more

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Women’s Wrestling Talk interviewed Athena and provided PWTorch with the following excerpts. The entire video is available HERE.

•On What It’s Like to Be The Face of ROH

It’s not something I ever thought would be a sentence. Like, it wasn’t on a bingo card for me in any year, or just in life. But I’m really happy. Just all the hard work that I put in, not only just in the ring, outside of the ring, paid off. And people are recognizing that like, hey, I’m the franchise player, I am the main character of a show. And on some weird level, it feels weird saying that, to be honest with you, but it’s really cool. It’s a really cool accomplishment. And I honestly just go to work and try to do the best job I can every single day. So I’m happy it is paying off.

•About Diversity Across Brands

It’s really cool. I don’t know how to really explain it other than, we have an unsaid sisterhood, it feels like. I remember being there when Bianca won the Royal Rumble, and I was just so ecstatic for her because I know how hard she had worked. And then, you know, when I left WWE, I talked to Trin so much across the board, and we actually became like sisters from another mister. And it was just like, I texted her a couple days ago, ‘Girl, we’re gonna get this match one day’. And I’m like, ‘Yes, we are girl, one day we gonna get it.’ You know, so it’s just really cool to see how diverse women’s wrestling is right now, not just talking about African American women, just talking across the board. And we can’t forget Willow Nightingale making history as well in there. You know, it’s just showing that hard work pays off. And hard work will shine through every step of the way.

•Regarding Weekly Meetings with Tony Khan

I have found that I have a very good collaboration with my boss, which is something that I feel like I was missing for a very, very long time. And the fact that he trusts me to make certain calls and a lot of times Billie is just staring at a wall, if you really want to know. Like Billy is just off smiling in a corner somewhere. And Lexy, you know, Lexy is just trying to make sure Billie doesn’t fall down and hurt herself. But between me and TK, it’s a really cool, like coloration that we’ve had with this entire thing; because we’ve taken a lot of risks. I think across the board that are outside my character; that are outside stuff that he normally does, and it’s paid off every step of the way. But that’s just having trust with one another.

•On the Importance of Ring of Honor

The beauty of Ring of Honor, Tony has allowed them to showcase themselves. Tony has allowed them to have storylines outside of the main championship. And I think on some level, he is experimenting with what he can and can’t do with the roster. So to me, it’s always been a collaboration with me and TK, it’s always been. I go into the office, hey, we have a conversation, which ends up great. Sometimes we butt heads. But hey, who hasn’t butt heads with their boss before. But 99.9% of the time we come out happier and better and honestly, the storyline has benefited from day one, when he pulled us in the office and said, ‘Hey, there’s something here. I think we’re going to pull the trigger on this. Him allowing me to make certain calls and me allowing him to make certain calls has made this an absolute banger of a feud, has made this an absolute banger of a storyline and it’s brought a lot of eyes to Ring of Honor that I don’t think people were expecting.

•On main eventing Final Battle

He’s like, ‘Hey, champ, what’s going on?’. I was like, ‘Oh, what’s up TK?’. He goes, ‘Final Battle. You and Billie’. I was like, ‘Yeah, I was gonna talk to you about that’. He goes, ‘Main Event’. And I was like, ‘Thanks, Tony’. He’s like, ‘Can’t think of a better way to end the year. Doing great champ’. Then like, just went on, ‘I don’t think it makes sense for anybody else to be in that position. You’ve been killing it day in and day out.’

Check out the full interview on YouTube HERE.

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