10 Wrestlers AEW Stole From Under WWE's Nose
4. Serena Deeb
Wrestling is dated and weird and sexist and ageist and should be better and there's perhaps no better mainstream illustration of that than the perpetually mismanaged AEW women's division.
From even before All Elite Wrestling was a thing, women's wrestling has been an afterthought. 2018's ALL IN had one fatal four-way with no story, several similar contests took place when the company launched in 2019, and Dynamite remains the home of one solitary women's match a week as of April 2023. Such limited time means limited exposure, which is particularly jarring when a performer gets over enough to warrant presence on a far more regular basis.
Serena Deeb was all of those things in 2021, and kicked so much a*s that a series with Hikaru Series commanded committed television time even if it didn't stand to get either woman any closer to a title or another story afterwards. But at very least, she got that - 'The Professor Of Professional Wrestling' was employed by WWE as a 32-year-old coach between 2018 and 2020, having worked the 2017 Mae Young Classic several years on from her Straight Edge Society run alongside CM Punk. Still early into her wrestling prime years, she remains one of the best pick-ups in the division's short and difficult history.