Athena Reveals WWE Hall Of Famer Helped Her Perfect The O-Face
AEW star Athena has given props to a WWE Hall of Famer who gave her the motivation and confidence to take her O-Face finisher to the next level.
Athena recently claimed the first gold of her time in AEW when she defeated Mercedes Martinez at ROH Final Battle for the Ring of Honor Women’s Championship. The former Ember Moon has shown off a more aggressive side in recent weeks in the ring but one thing has remained the same from her time in NXT to the WWE main roster, to now and that is Athena’s impressive O-Face finishing move.
Speaking to Chris Jericho on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, Athena explained how the move – known in WWE as the Eclipse evolved thanks to the intervention of WWE Hall of Famer Booker T:
“Booker T kind of opened my eyes to like high flying and aerial and being kind of not so much an aerialist, but just having diversity within my move set. I was desperately – I still am afraid of heights. I think it’s muscle memory now, but I remember like I was doing the O-Face off the second rope. And I’ve been doing it for years. And it just was murdering my body on the second rope. I’ve been doing it off the second rope and it just hurt my body because of how quick you have to turn doing it off the second.”
“Booker was like, go up to the top and I go What? What? No, sir, not for me. Someone’s gonna push me I’m gonna fall down. He’s like, so what? You’ll get up and do it again. I was like, What? No. And he was like, alright, fine, give the move to me, and that’s the end of it. You’ll be safe, you know.”
“So I give it to Booker, Booker takes it and he’s like, alright now you’re doing off the top rope in this ring, which was like the really cool thing about Booker’s [facility] at that time was his, he had a ring with short ropes. And then the step above that would have been a little bit taller and a little bit taller.”
“So eventually, you work your way up to a regulation WWE ring at that time, or what we use currently. And it was like, okay, Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps. And that’s kind of how I got the O-Face of the top rope. And I feel like, man, I have all this time to turn now. And it was scary. It was terrifying for the first few times, but like, he kept pushing me to do things that I was uncomfortable doing, which I like immensely thankful for that.”
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