Athena Was Told To Lose Weight Before WWE Signed Her
AEW star Athena has discussed being told to lose weight by WWE and how she was kicked out by her parents for abandoning college to follow her dream.
Athena is currently a part of the AEW roster but prior to joining the company, she spent several years as Ember Moon in WWE. Most of her success in that company came as part of the NXT roster, where she is a one-time NXT Women’s Champion.
But success did not come easy for the star. As Athena explained to Chris Jericho on the Talk Is Jericho podcast, she had to overcome her parents’ doubts about her chosen career early on:
“My parents didn’t really support the wrestling career until I got to WWE. My parents have always been supportive but I think they were hard on me because they wanted me to succeed and they were like school is the way to do that.”
“They are both extremely successful in their professions and when I’m like, ‘I want to be a pro wrestler’ and they go to the first show in Marshall, Texas, 20 people in the crowd and they’re like, ‘what is this going to pay for?’ So, I get it, you know, I ended up getting kicked out and I learned to survive on my own.”
She then explained how she was kicked out after using her tuition money to attend a WWE tryout and then-developmental territory FCW:
“I dropped out of college because I had a WWE tryout, I think it was like the first one at FCW, and I used my tuition money to pay for the way to get there.”
However, at that tryout, Athena wasn’t signed and by way of feedback was given a pamphlet that had suggestions for her such as “get hair extensions”:
“I remember getting this form that said ‘doesn’t have the Diva look, work on that.’ They had this whole pamphlet on what you did well, what you didn’t do well, what you need to work on. Main critique was ‘doesn’t have Diva look’ and then it had some suggestions like maybe get hair extensions, maybe get new gear, maybe get this.”
A later private tryout came for Athena but at that one the feedback she was given surrounded her weight:
“I remember just being told ‘I just don’t know if we should sign you or tell you to lose some more weight.’ That was kind of what it came down to and I was like, ‘I can lose the weight, just sign me.'”
“So, I lose the weight. I’m like, ‘yes, alright we got this, we hit that number’ but it was not in a healthy way because I wanted it so bad. I had a cup of strawberries in the morning, I would run three miles, and then I would have a cup of strawberries at night. That was kind of the only thing I was ingesting.”
Despite the weight loss, Athena wasn’t signed after that tryout either with her eventually joining WWE in 2015. She is currently the Ring of Honor Women’s World Champion after she defeated Mercedes Martinez at Final Battle.