It wasn’t 100 percent that Mercedes Moné would get to this moment after she suffered a severe ankle injury when she lost her footing on the top rope and fell to the outside during a match against Willow Nightingale for the inaugural NJPW STRONG women’s championship last May.
The 32-year-old Moné — formerly WWE’s Sasha Banks — said her doctors told her the injury was potentially career-ending, but she was “ready to recover the moment I got hurt.”
A little more than a year later, Moné will return to the ring for the first time since in her AEW debut match against Nightingale for the TBS Championship at Double or Nothing at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday (8 p.m, Bleacher Report, Triller).
“This was almost all taken away from me and I couldn’t imagine where I would be if I didn’t have wrestling. I would be so, so lost,” Moné said. “So for me, it’s really putting my heart, my soul, my body all out there all over again and not being afraid of getting hurt. That’s the biggest thing about having an injury is not being afraid of hitting these moves you hit before. You don’t want to get hurt again. I’m ready to put my body on the line. I’m ready to put my heart out there.”
Getting to that point wasn’t easy for Moné, who said she enlisted the best doctors and physical therapists to ensure her return.
She said the first week after surgery was the “most pain I’ve ever felt in my whole life.”
Moné couldn’t walk on the injured foot for months and said it was “so hard to learn how to do things without a lot of people’s help while hobbling on one leg.”
It taught her a lot about patience and the power of the human body, something she needed when it was time to get back in the ring as well.
The fear of injuring herself took a little while to go away and she thanked Tyler Breeze, a former WWE star and one of her training buddies, for helping her get there.
“When I first started to train, just running ropes hurt and that scared me,” Moné said. “I’m like, ‘No way I’m going the path to feel this pain my whole life.’ Finally, it got better and little things stopped hurting and finally Breeze pushed me to do some of my moves that I was gonna do like double knees and going off the top rope. I hit them, so the fear was gone. Everything felt back to normal and I’m ready.”
Moné said she spent the past year training in every wrestling school in the Orlando area.
That included working out with the former Scrypts in WWE, Lince Dorado and former Ring of Honor women’s champion Sumie Sakai, among others to be exposed to many styles and teachings as possible.
She was medically cleared to wrestle in December and believes she’s in the best shape of her life for her AEW debut.
Moné said AEW president Tony Khan delayed things to “make sure that everything was lined up perfectly” for one of his three big free-agent signings this year, along with Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada.
She debuted with the company in her hometown of Boston at TD Garden on March 13 and now will finally have her first match at a show that celebrates AEW’s five-year anniversary.
Her return bout against Nightingale, 30, brings her full circle.
Moné, who now uses the “CEO” moniker, praised her opponent’s strides and success as a performer since their first match. Nightingale has been on quite the run as she also won the women’s Owen Hart Cup tournament along with her belts in New Japan and AEW.
“It’s been an amazing growth to watch,” Moné said. “The moment she beat me it was like a star risen. Her eyes lit up. Her career has taken off ever since then… It’s been amazing to see and I can’t wait to take it all away from her on Sunday.”
Moné doesn’t see going after the TBS Championship as trying to win a secondary title to the AEW Women’s World Championship held by “Timeless” Toni Storm. Bringing the TBS Championship home is just the first step in what Moné hopes is a run of belt collecting.
“Secondary championship? It’s the face of TBS,” she said. “It’s going to be the No. 1 championship once I hold it. Don’t be worried, not only am I going to get that one, I’m gonna get another one. I’m gonna get all the championships. There is no No. 1, No.2, No. 3, it’s just titles. It’s all a collection just for me.”
She doesn’t view the match as one that needs to be a tone-setter for her time in AEW, believing fans are already familiar with her history of tremendous work in the ring – touting herself as the “greatest women’s wrestler of all time.”
“For me, it’s just knowing. It’s not proving, it’s knowing that I’m the best,” she said. “It’s knowing that I’m the greatest. It’s knowing all of the hard work I’ve been through to get here. It’s showing the fans this Sunday all of that.”
Outside the ring, joining AEW has allowed Moné to work in a different creative environment than in WWE – and it’s given her a greater level of input.
She said she enjoys having a direct line of communication and “great partnership” with Khan to hash out ideas. Moné also helped bring in Emmy-winning writer/producer Jennifer Pepperman – whom she worked closely with in WWE – as AEW’s new VP of Content Development.
“Not to say bad things about WWE, but to have writers before who just did not hear my voice, had no idea how to write for my voice, was so hard for many many years and I never really got to have promos until Jennifer came to WWE,” the multi-time women’s world champion said of her bond with Pepperman.
“I remember her handing me a promo and I almost cried because I finally had a writer who heard my voice and gave me words that fit my character and ever since then me and her were just like peanut butter and jelly.”
She also praised Pepperman’s efforts in fighting for women and getting things done for them backstage in WWE. It’s why she wanted her as part of the team in AEW and said “changes have been made since she’s been here.”
With Pepperman around, Moné didn’t sound like she’s considering a change in approach to her character and promos now that she’s in AEW where writers are generally relied on less than WWE and performers to tap even more into their real-life selves in their presentation.
“I don’t feel like that makes it really wrestling, right? Wrestling is larger than life,” she said. “It’s all about the characters and excitement and telling a story. I feel like people need help telling a story. What’s better if you are telling a story than having a writer help you write that story.
“I work with Jennifer fairly closely so we go back and forth with what to say. It’s not people handing out scripts saying, ‘Hey, say this.’ It’s really coming from the heart. She’s really helped me find my voice. And I think that’s what makes AEW so cool, it’s that the wrestlers can go to the writers that we do have here and speak from the heart and work with him and figure out what they want to say with their characters.”
Moné has already seen how working with Pepperman has had a positive effect on Nightingale.
“I’ve seen just how she’s talked to Willow and make her excited and tell her how she is a champion and how she should have confidence and belief in herself and to see how the structure and Willow’s energy changes,” Moné said.
Another familiar face in AEW is Saraya – formerly Paige in WWE. It’s a match and storyline wrestling fans have been intrigued by since Saraya returned in September 2022 from what at the time was considered a career-ending neck injury suffered on a simple kick delivered by Moné during a WWE live event in 2017.
When she returned, Saraya told The Post she was open to doing whatever Moné was “comfortable” with.
Moné sounds more than open to the two squaring off at some point, but the story would need to “create something bigger” than just bringing up what happened in WWE that some AEW fans may not know about.
“I’m here to face everybody, every woman here,” Moné said. “So if she [Saraya] wants to be on the list, she’s more than welcome to wrestle me. She’s not gonna get any of my titles that’s for sure.”
For now, Moné is focused on bringing her story with Nightingale full circle at Double or Nothing.
When asked about friend Bayley’s WWE women’s championship win at WrestleMania 40, she joked she has to win now Sunday, “so we can have our champion picture together.”
Doing so will mean Moné is completely back from an injury that threatened to take her career away and in the place she believes she belongs.
“It’s gonna mean everything to me to be back in the spotlight I deserve, the face of AEW and the face of TBS and to just give back wrestling,” Mone said. “I want to wrestle. I’m so excited for this next chapter because it’s not what it used to be. It’s something brand new and different and something I can really help control.”
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