WOTY Series: Athena — A Fallen Goddess Finds Her Wings.
In a year where women’s wrestling has had its ups and downs in North America, the Texas native has proven to be a consistent, reliable staple.
The year is coming to an end, so I decided to re-watch the wrestlers I had in my discussion for wrestler of the year. Athena was on a very short list of wrestlers I had considered. I have watch parties where I watch and breakdown the matches of the people on my list. My criteria for wrestler of the year has very little to do with draw power, promotions, and everything outside the ring. Instead, I personally valued everything they did when they were in the ring. I like to look at wrestlers who were either A. involved in a lot of matches that got high grades from me, B. wrestlers whose individual performances helped elevate the matches they were in or wrestlers they faced, or C. both. Despite this, don’t be fooled; Athena has many of the attributes that people who aren’t nerds and junkies for in-ring performances like to see. She is cunning, majestic, charismatic, violent, and entertaining. It was a joy to watch inside and outside the ring.
No matter who she faces, she gives you her best foot forward, and she will give you a reason to stay engaged. I re-watched 10–20 of her best matches this year to re-assess her year. Some of these matches include:
Athena vs Marina Shafir. AEW Dark (1/6/2023)
Athena vs Miyu Yamashita. Prestige Wrestling (01/21/2023)
Athena vs Emi Sakura. ROH Honorclub (03/29/2023)
Athena vs Yuka Sakazaki. ROH Supercard (03/31/2023)
Athena vs Skye Blue. ROH HonorClub (05/11/2023)
Athena vs Kiera Hogan Street Fight. ROH Honorclub (6/22/2023)
Athena vs Willow Nightingale. ROH Honorclub (2/25/2023)
Athena vs Willow Nightingale. Death by Dishonor (07/21/2023)
These are just a few of the matches that Athena had that stood out this year. She has also had many entertaining squash matches as well. I will be using this piece to help explain, analyze, and breakdown why the Fallen Goddess has reigned supreme and deserves consideration for having the best year in wrestling.
The Case
This is the section of the piece where I will show and give my perspective on some of Athena’s performances from the matches above. I will do this for all the other wrestlers I plan to write about for this series as well. Using a combination of videos from her matches and my own analysis, I will show some of her best. In-ring wrestling performances are very subjective, so this is just my opinion, but I hope to prove some of Athena’s best attributes.
- Athena has versatility. She knows how to play a coward and a bully.
Playing heel wrestling is not always easy. As a bad guy, your goal is to make the crowd hate you as much as possible while also making your baby face look good when needed. Character work is not just something you do outside of the ring; it’s something you can put into your performances in the ring. This balance is hard to strike, but Athena makes it look easy. Here are some examples:
In this first clip, it’s seen that Athena is not going to out grapple Marina Shafir, so what does she do? What any smart person would do. Use the rules to her advantage. She grabs the ropes as tight as she can and gets her back off, as she has to re-examine what her next move should be. Smart work that makes Marina look like a legit challenger also goes with her martial arts background. Athena is going to have to find a different way than her usual bullying tactics.
In this second clip, Athena is showing off and trying to get inside Willow’s head. This is a tactic that has been growing as she has gotten more arrogant and sadistic during her reign. When this match happened, Athena had been dominating every opponent in front of her. This is one of the ways she does it. She uses a balance of mind games, her intelligence, and her ruthlessness to get opponents off their game.
Athena’s bully character has gotten to a point where she has gotten away with intimidating referees. This has allowed her some leeway that you normally wouldn’t get with the tactics she uses. We saw Athena use steel steps, poke people in the eyes, throw the referee in the way, and get slow counts when on the outside. She’s like the mean girl that the principal and teacher can’t touch because their parents are big contributors to the school. She is having a blast playing this character.
In this final clip, she puts it all together. She baits Skye Blue in from the beginning of the match and asserts dominance. Athena throws a nasty strike and then taunts Skye Blue. It’s so easy for Athena to make herself hated in seconds. Watch the way she cares for herself in her matches. The way she talks trash to her opponents and uses her facial expression to express herself. Athena is really good at getting heat and making her opponents more sympathetic.
2. Athena’s offense is nothing to joke about. The outside is her playground.
When Athena is controlling a match, I find it’s hard to look away. She is either throwing a big bomb with her strikes, targeting a body part, or using the outside as a way to change the momentum on the baby face who’s getting the advantage. These are standard tactics that all heels should use, but Athena has found a way to tap into another level. When I watch her wrestle, her offense rarely feels wasteful. She mixes it up with a good balance of strikes, power moves, and submissions. She has proven she is not reliant on her finisher to put you away, and she will either knock you unconscious or make you tap out. To add to all this, if she is feeling desperate, she uses the outside, like the ring post, ring apron, and steel ramp, to hurt you. Each use of a big spot is a turning of the tide, where she finds a way to keep dominating opponents.
Athena vs. Emi Sakura was a different style of match. Sakura is a veteran and legend who knows all the tricks of the trade and has blitzed Athena. Athena was on the defensive until this moment. This was a rare match where Athena couldn’t bully her opponent and instead had to use her desperation, aggression, and IQ in a more unique way to gain the edge. This is a good example of Athena always finding a way to turn a match around with her use of tactics outside the ring.
One part of Athena’s offensive game that doesn’t get enough credit is her ability to pick an opponent apart. One of my favorite performances by Athena is against Miyu Yamashita at their prestige wrestling bout in January of this year. She is methodical with her dissection of Yamashita in this match. Yamashita is famous for kicks, so Athena’s game plan is simple. Destroy the legs. This match was one of my favorites from Athena, as we saw it utilize a good game plan, and the structure of this match was good for 90% of it. Yamashita also did a good job throughout this match of selling the damage that Athena was doing. They showed great chemistry.
Willow Nightingale and Athena had one of my favorite series of matches this year, and this is one of the reasons why. Athena goes full sadistic in this match with her attack on Willow. She does everything right here, and Willow is a perfect baby-face opponent. Attacking the arm, taunting the crowd, and really making herself look like she’s trying to hurt Willow. It’s easy to hate Athena in this match and root for Willow to win. To have a great match, your opponent has to also bring it, and Willow is a great partner for this.
3. She has a formula, but she knows how to deviate from it. That’s important.
Athena has done a good job in her big matches, keeping me guessing how she’s going to win. Her finisher, the O-Face (a diving corkscrew stunner), is rarely used, and she has shown the ability to win in different ways. In this match, she makes Emi Sakura tap out to the crossface.
Similar to the Emi Sakura match, Skye Blue taps out. However, there are some key differences. They do a good job here by making you believe Skye Blue was going to escape this with a rope break before Athena rolls her back to the middle of the ring. Then you see her switch to a camel clutch to make sure Blue couldn’t escape, putting more pressure on the back and neck. This is high-IQ stuff and one of my favorite finishes from an Athena match this year.
One of the rare times she actually used her finishers was against Willow Nightingale. This was special because of how rarely she used it to defeat an opponent this year. That is how you protect a finisher and make it feel more important.
This was a rare one for Athena. In a reign that is defined by her dominance, there aren’t a lot of matches; you can say she barely escapes. Athena has to do a very villainous grabbing of the tights to get the 1–2–3 pin here. This helps set up the Athena vs. Kiera Hogan street fight. This is a good way to keep your opponent looking strong if you are going to have a follow-up match. A match that had more difficulty than Athena expected and helped Hogan. Athena is constantly showing you that she can plan any role and any card to beat you.
Almost every wrestler and almost every promotion have a formula. We’ve seen it in WWE, in the 90’s with AJPW, and in the 2010’s with New Japan’s main event scene. After a couple of matches, I started to notice Athena’s formula. She likes to taunt her opponents, slide to the outside when she’s losing, use something outside of the ring like the ring apron or the ring post to turn a match around, and then beat you in the ring. There’s nothing wrong with having a formula. Most of the greatest wrestlers of all time had a formula. The familiar adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” can apply, especially when it’s popular, but for someone like me who looks for a bit of versatility in my wrestler of the year candidates, it’s different.
The question becomes: can you subvert my expectations? Can you make it a bit more interesting? Can you change your match formula based on the opponent? I wanted to know if Athena could set herself apart from other wrestlers and show she’s in a class of her own. Athena answered all my questions with many of her title defenses. She has not only shown me the ability to tell different stories with her in-ring work, but she can also find different ways to express her character through her offense, selling, facial expressions, and psychology.
4. Athena knows when and how to make her opponents look good.
This one is a bit self-explanatory. There are a lot of great sellers and bumpers, but Athena really knows how to get you invested. Here are some of my personal favorites.
Final Thoughts
I learned a lot about Athena. Athena has brought it to every event she has wrestled at, despite some of the things working against her. Similarly to the two others on my list, her input and effort were better than some of the output. This means that Athena elevated the other wrestlers she faced. While it didn’t always produce a great match, Athena herself excelled in multiple phases of her role, and that’s something I can’t ignore. Her greatness came despite her not getting to face some of the other best women in the world. Athena works for AEW, which has Willow Nightingale, Emi Sakura, Hikaru Shida, Toni Storm, Thunder Rosa, and Jamie Hayter on their roster. These are some of the best wrestlers in the world, but Athena only got to face two of them. I would say Athena’s best two opponents were Emi Sakura and Willow Nightingale, respectively. Both gave Athena her best matches this year, but it’s unfortunate she didn’t get to work with more. This was a factor that I feel makes her case a little weaker than a few others on my list, but she is still in the mix with two months left. The growth and versatility of cowardly heel with a lot of bravado to full-on domination and sadistic tendencies has been a joy to watch.
Black wrestlers are rarely allowed to be champions, as long as Athena is. Black wrestlers are rarely allowed to dominate in the way that Athena has. Athena has the ball, and she’s running with it. She is the longest reigning champion in the history of the ROH women’s title, and for good reason. Athena has become one of my favorite acts in wrestling for a reason. Not only has she become one of the defining names of women’s wrestling in 2023, but Athena has cemented herself as one of the best wrestlers in the world, regardless of gender. In ROH, a fallen goddess found her wings.
