Mercedes Moné Confirms WWE Return Talks (AEW News)
The former Sasha Banks almost reprised her famous WWE role right before doing deal with AEW...
Mercedes Moné was in talks with WWE to return to the company as Sasha Banks right before she signed on the dotted line with All Elite Wrestling.
Opening up in the latest edition of her Moné Mag, she explained how an experience with AEW before formally finalising a contract sealed the deal for her next move, and how WWE were surprisingly back in the frame just a year removed from her controversial and acrimonious 2022 departure.
As she put it; “Let me take you all the way back to 2023. At the time, I was still going back and forth in talks with WWE when I got an invitation to go to All In London...Now, you guys know me. I LOVE professional wrestling, so there was absolutely NO WAY I was going to miss the opportunity to witness something this big - a wrestling show of this magnitude, outside of WWE, at Wembley Stadium. Then I saw Tony [Khan] backstage, and he was SO excited to have me there. So excited, in fact, that he wanted me to do a backstage segment with… WILLOW!”
As buzzed as she was with the warm welcome, she made it clear she just wanted to be a punter for the organisation's biggest night, as opposed to doing a segment with Willow Nightingale or anybody else on the roster.
She continued; “WAIT! I am NOT signed. I do NOT work here. I’m just here to enjoy the show! And for once… I got to be a FAN...Do you understand how rare that is for me? I never really got the opportunity to sit in the crowd and just be a fan at WrestleMania. Okay… MAYBE there was one time I went in disguise for Bayley’s match...This time, I could actually sit there. No match to prepare for. No entrance to think about. No pressure. Just Moné and more than 80,000 screaming...I was in awe. I wanted to cry. And somewhere inside of me, I think I already knew. When I got back home, there was one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about: AEW WAS THE PLACE FOR ME.”
Moné appeared on camera at Wembley, but as noted, just as a fan at the time. The story of Tony Khan's excited first instinct is particularly relevant now as, three years on, she is set to compete for the AEW Women's Championship against current titleholder Nightingale in the very same Stadium.