Tay Melo Reveals Key Advice From Former AEW World Champion
Tay Melo has enjoyed working with a popular AEW veteran.
Back in June, Tay Melo made a surprise return to AEW, coming to the aid of Anna Jay. A week later, it was announced that she’d be returning to the ring.
Melo hadn’t wrestled in AEW since teaming with Jay in defeat to Ruby Soho and Willow Nightingale in a Street Fight back in January 2023. However, she did return to action at Stardom New Year Dream in January 2025 alongside Mina Shirakawa against Athena and Thekla.
During her absence, Melo welcomed her first child with her husband, Sammy Guevara.
Tay Melo Heaps Praise On Samoa Joe
During a new interview with Renee Paquette on Close-Up, Melo looked back on her return to action and the challenge of juggling a wrestling career with motherhood.
The star also opened up about her friendship with Marina Shafir. The two women have worked side by side in NXT as well as in AEW, and they both come from a legitimate fighting background. Melo is a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a black belt in Judo, where she competed in trials for the 2026 Olympic Games.
Shafir also trained in Judo as a child and into her teens, before launching a career in MMA prior to becoming a wrestler.
“I love Marina. Love Marina. Marina is one of my good friends, personal friends. I would love- I wrestled her before.”
Melo went on to discuss the difficulty of trying to incorporate her Judo background into pro wrestling. She credited Samoa Joe with trying to help her add those holds to her wrestling skillset, despite it not being as easy as some might think.
“I remember talking to her a while ago because we go way back… It’s like things that we think it would work. It just doesn’t translate. Then sometimes people like, ‘Hey, put a little bit more of your background in here.’
Then (I say) ‘Believe me, I’m trying.’ It’s just like, we gotta test it out a lot of things, and a lot of the things that we do there, it doesn’t work here because you gotta think like, ‘okay, here I’m trying to, be the smartest, fastest, and win this as quick as I can here.
Here I’m trying to do it without people realizing what I’m doing. So like, it’s just like, yeah, it’s different, you gotta adjust.
Like I remember, I was trying to do an arm bar with some other girl, and then (Samoa) Joe saw and he’s looking, I’m like, ‘I know something’s not right, but I don’t know how to fix it,’ and I’m thinking, and then he comes and he helps me. I’m like, of course, someone with experience that can see both sides and understand both sides.
So it’s great that Marina has Jon (Moxley) to help, you know, because he’s seeing both sides and he knows how to help her there too. So it’s a great mentor to have. So like having this little help from Joe right there.”
Tay Melo was most recently in action on the August 9 edition of Collision, where she teamed with Queen Aminata and Willow Nightingale as the trio lost to the Triangle of Madness.
Meanwhile, Samoa Joe, Katsuyori Shibata, and Powerhouse Hobbs successfully defended their World Trios Titles against GOA and Ricochet on the August 27 episode of Dynamite. Elsewhere on the show, The Opps fourth member Hook returned to television after spending several weeks out following a concussion.
It was recently reported that Hook joined Kyle Fletcher, and Kota Ibushi in signing new AEW contracts.
H/t to Fightful