ROH Women's Champ Athena Reacts To Swerve Strickland's AEW Collision Name-Drop

ROH Women's World Champion Athena has been heavily praised by wrestling fans over the past year for her work as the star attraction in ROH. Her AEW debut in 2022 was met with a lot of fanfare, but she has since embraced her inner mean-streak and become one of the most complete wrestlers in the world. So much so that Swerve Strickland namedropped her on a recent "AEW Collision" when he listed famous black wrestlers who have achieved success. Speaking on "Sunday Night's Main Event," the former Ember Moon revealed she has a long history with Strickland. "Strickland's another one of those family friends invited to the cookout type thing," Athena said. 

Athena went on to admit that she didn't watch the promo live, and had no idea what Strickland was talking about when he met her backstage. "I remember being backstage and I was getting ready for ROH so I had make-up on, I was getting my make-up done ... he was like 'did you hear it?'" Athena said. "I was like 'what are you talking about? Get out of my face.' He was like 'did you hear the promo? I gave you a shoutout.' So he pulls it up on his phone and I was like 'that's so cool you didn't have to do that.' He was like 'no I wanted to do that you deserve this.'"

Strickland also gave a shoutout to current WWE star Kofi Kingston, who became the first African-born WWE Champion in 2019, as well as Ron Simmons, who became the first African-American to win the WCW World Championship in 1992. Strickland will look to follow in their footsteps when he challenges for the AEW World Championship at Revolution on March 3.

Please credit "Sunday Night's Main Event" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.