Athena Thinks Two Women Don’t Get Enough Credit For WWE Women’s Evolution
Former three-time WWE Divas Champion Paige is letting her contract run out, with her final day in WWE being July 7th.
Another wrestler who was once a champion in WWE and already left the company is current AEW star Athena, known as Ember Moon in WWE. While on NBC "Sports Boston", former NXT Women's Champion Athena commented on Paige's influence on the women's revolution in WWE.
"Everyone says the women's evolution started with The Bellas, I highly disagree," Athena stated. "It started with Paige and Emma, or Tenille and Saraya, It started with them. That was the first mainstream women's match that got time that made people like, want more."
Paige and Tenille Dashwood, Emma at the time, were both vital parts of the women's division in "NXT" when it was being turned more into a standalone brand rather than a reality contest show. Paige defeated Emma in the finals of the NXT Women's Championship tournament in order to become the inaugural NXT Women's Champion. Following this, Paige would go on to have success on the main roster until she suffered an injury, tallying up two Divas Championship wins in her first six months, with the first being won on her first night on "Monday Night Raw" by defeating AJ Lee.
Dashwood would not find such success in WWE despite being with the company from 2012 until 2017, with her last match for the company being against Asuka on the "Monday Night Raw" following TLC 2017. Alongside 'The Influence' tag team partner, Madison Rayne, Dashwood won the IMPACT Knockouts Tag Team Championship, marking her first time holding a championship in a major organization. The Influence won the Tag Titles at IMPACT Wrestling Sacrifice on March 5th and recently dropped the titles to Taya Valkyrie and Rosemary on Slammiversary earlier this month.
Since Paige and Dashwood's match, women have gone on to accomplish many historic feats in WWE. Some of those first-ever evens are an all-women Pay-Per-View called Evolution, a women's Royal Rumble, a women's Elimination Chamber match, a women's Hell in a Cell, main-eventing PPVs, and regularly being in the main event of weekly TV shows.
The Bellas held down the fort, along with AJ Lee and Paige, on the main roster until September of 2015 when Bella lost the title to Charlotte Flair. Flair, along with Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks, were brought up to the main roster so there would be a heavier feature on women's wrestling as there was in "NXT."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "NBC Sports Boston" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription