Athena has a new challenger.
The forever champion had a busy week in Japan as Athena’s international tour started when she teamed with Thekla to take on Mina Shirakawa and Tay Melo. The ROH Women’s World Champion won the match for their team, but it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine once the match was done.
That’s because Thekla wanted a shot at Athena’s world title. The ROH star simply laughed and rejected any notion that she’ll be the next challenger for her belt. Thekla was not too thrilled about her response and made Athena reconsider her decision at Wrestle Dynasty.
Athena had the four-way international match won as she hit Willow Nightingale with the O-Face and had her for the three count. But Thekla pulled the referee out of the ring. Thekla got into a little argument with Athena and Momo Watanabe took advantage of the distraction by clocking Athena in the face with a baseball ball. She got the three count after hitting a bridge suplex.
With tensions riding high, the moment Athena saw Thekla, she went after the STARDOM talent.
It was then confirmed that on January 13th, Thekla will challenge Athena for the ROH Women’s World Championship. Athena has held the belt for an historic 750 plus days. The “Fallen Goddess” has beaten some of the best female talent AEW and Ring of Honor has to offer such as Mercedes Martinez, Kiera Hogan, Hikaru Shida, and just recently, Billie Starkz.
Thekla is no stranger to being a champion herself. The STARDOM wrestler held a title six times in her career, including the SWA Undisputed World Women’s Championship, WUW World Underground Wrestling Women’s Championship, and the Triangle Ribbon Championship. This will be the first match between Athena and Thekla.
Athena hasn’t been shy about wanting to work in Japan. She mentioned back in 2023 that she’s always wanted to wrestle in STARDOM and was a little jealous that Willow Nightingale got the opportunity to do so:
“On some level, I’m a teeny bit jealous,” she said to Fightful. “Willow has accomplished a lot. I’ve always wanted to go and wrestle for Stardom. I’ve wanted to go to Japan. That’s what I was known as on the Independents before I got signed to WWE, The American Joshi. It’s always been a dream of mine to wrestle in Japan. The fact that I get to wrestle so many of these phenomenal athletes coming from Japan to America is amazing because when I ship them back in broken pieces, it only says, ‘we don’t want to bring Athena over here, so we’re going to bring Willow.’”
Athena continued, “All jokes aside, I am very jealous of the opportunities that Willow has gotten because I’ve been so adamant about trying to get to Japan and trying to compete on that level. I want to test my skills out in Japan too. I know that the girls they are sending over here are great. I want to see the ones that haven’t left yet because I know they are phenomenal. The Giulias, I want to wrestle KAIRI, Mayu (Iwatani), there is a list of them and most of them are in STARDOM."
While she won’t be wrestling Giulia or KAIRI anytime soon due to both women going over to WWE, it’s great that she has the opportunity to showcase her talents outside of Ring of Honor.