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Mercedes Moné Talks About Preparing For Her NJPW Debut Match

mercedes mone njpw pose

Mercedes Mone is working very hard as she prepares for her upcoming NJPW debut match.

It was at Wrestle Kingdom 17 on January 4th when Mercedes Mone made her debut in NJPW as she confronted and dropped the IWGP Women’s Champion KAIRI.

Mercedes Mone will make her NJPW in-ring debut on Saturday, February 18th at the Battle of the Valley show taking place in San Jose, California. In that match, Mone will face KAIRI for the IWGP Women’s Championship in a matchup between two women that worked together in WWE.

In May 2022, Mone left WWE and instead of going back to resume her career as Sasha Banks, she chose to move on when she was legally able to at the start of 2023. There were plenty of rumors about Banks going back to WWE. Instead, she wanted to move on.

In an interview with the NJPW website, Mercedes Mone talked about everything she has been doing going into the Battle of the Valley match.

“I’ve been working every single day since I left there. I’ve been making movies, making TV shows, magazines, modelling, I haven’t stopped. But wrestling has always been my number one love, and there was no soul searching involved in coming back to wrestling. I went to Mexico for a month in October and lived there.”

“I went to all different wrestling schools to learn from trainers that I had grown up watching; from Skayde to Ricky Marvin to Bandido, there are so many legends there to learn from. To train at that altitude as well, it gets you ready from a conditioning perspective so much faster as well. But yeah, I was ready in October, and I knew coming to Japan was exactly what I wanted.”

“I was shooting a movie in between training in Mexico then, but I knew I was going to Japan to train in December whether it was doing something with New Japan or not. When it all came together with NJPW though for Wrestle Kingdom it was ‘wow, OK, this is really happening’. This has been a dream literally since I was a teenager.”

Watch Battle in the Valley on February 18 on FITE!