AEW's Willow Nightingale Recalls Widely Praised Feud With ROH Women's Champ Athena

If there's one thing that the new era of ROH has become known for, it's women's wrestling. More specifically the ROH Women's World Champion Athena, who has quickly become one of the biggest selling points of the promotion thanks to her feuds with Billie Starkz, Hikaru Shida, and Willow Nightingale. Athena and Nightingale had a trilogy of matches in 2023 that culminated in their rubber match at Death Before Dishonor, the first-ever ROH pay-per-view to be headlined by a women's match.

Appearing on "Chats and Graps," Nightingale looked back on the first match the two had in March 2023, a match Nightingale didn't know she was in until the day of the event. "We were doing the Ring of Honor tapings in Orlando Universal Studios at the time, and we would do like four tapings a day, like four different shows," Nightingale said. "We do the first show, they're like 'alright we're going to have you cut this promo and challenge Athena for the title' and I was like 'oh okay so like I'm wrestling today.'"

Nightingale went on to express that saying Athena is amazing in the ring doesn't do her justice, as she believes the ROH Women's World Champion is one of the best wrestlers in the world right now. However, Nightingale did get her flowers for the match as well. "Up to that point, that was like my favorite match I'd ever had in my life, and the next day I did a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Zack Sabre Jr. was also on that show. He was at the Ring of Honor tapings the night before, and he was like 'that was the best babyface performance I've seen in a long, long time.'"

Please credit "Chats and Graps" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.