AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/15 - 6/21

ROH Global Wars Cincinnati 6/18/26 / AEW Collision 6/20/26

Athena vs Syuri / Athena vs Maya World

MD: So, why do we watch?

I've been watching Athena as ROH champion since 2022. In that time, I've seen her defeat Yamashita, Nightingale, Sakura, Sakazaki, Hogan, Starkz, Martinez, Rose, Abadon, Catalina, Persephone, Windsor, and on and on and on, some multiple times. Plus, you might say the heart of the title run, the connective tissue, has been the Proving Ground matches. There have been so many of those. I've seen a lot of Athena. Anyone following ROH has.

So what's the appeal now so deep into the title reign? What made these two matches stand out against everything else last week? 

With some wrestlers, familiarity breeds contempt. You start predicting moves before they happen and while there's a sort of comfort to that, comfort only takes you so far. Athena is the definition of unpredictability. She is volatile, tempestuous. It's at the core of her character and generates the energy that draws you into her matches. But just as important, with Athena, the familiarity you develop gives you a launching point. 

For some wrestlers, it's all about spots and counters. The action drives character. The cart leads the horse. It's all about getting to the big idea with little care on how the match actually gets there. With Athena, character drives everything. Because the character is so good, so dynamic, so engaging, "everything" becomes full of organic, interesting destination points, maybe even more so than those matches that are contrived to get to certain spots. Who she is drives what she does. And she will react differently to every opponent and every situation. 

Knowing her past (encounters and otherwise) with Syuri and Maya made so much difference here. Despite her close connection to Maya as mentor and lack of such with Syuri, there were similarities. Both opponents had gotten the better of her in one way or another, and the list of those who had done so over the last few years is very small indeed. Syuri had successfully defended her IWGP Women's Title against Athena earlier this year. Maya is the one blemish on Athena's ROH singles record, surviving a Proving Ground match. She subsequently took he to the limit in the title match she earned and the Survival of the Fittest that followed. Maya may be billed as the It Girl, but there remains a sense of Final Girl to her as well, the one who might be fated to end the horror that is Athena. It's not quite a prophecy, not quite an inevitability, but it's as clear a possibility as any other right now. And Athena knows it. 

Of course, with Maya there were other factors at play. Her run through the Owen Hart Tournament, a title shot at All In on the line, is a bittersweet Cinderella story. Her brother passed away recently. Despite that, perhaps because of it, she threw herself into her work, becoming a last second substitution for Sareee and defeating Skye Blue to propel her to the semi-finals and to another match-up with Athena. The character of Athena has professed tough love when it comes to her minions. While there always seems to be a self-serving undercurrent to that, it's hard to deny the results, and occasionally, very occasionally, hints of humanity poke out from the monster she's become, though usually only to get swept away by the rage and fury of the fallen goddess. Meanwhile, Athena herself has lost in the semi-finals of the Owen tournament twice. As she carries ROH on her shoulders, she's been unable to reach the highest peaks in AEW. 

And of course, and this would be true if she was facing Shafir or Statlander in main events or Forza or Nixi XS in proving ground matches, Athena is excellent at not just finding the kernels of truth between herself and opponent but in crafting a dynamic character which will create such opportunities in the first place.

It's easy to compare and contrast how these matches played out and see that aspect plain as day. Look at the first few minutes of both. With Syuri, she extended her (yes, left) hand, Syuri took it graciously, Code of Honor met with some respect. Then they went at it, a feeling out process. Athena more than held her own, but Syuri, having the superior confidence and momentum since she won the last match, pressed her advantage. Athena didn't get dominated but she was absolutely on her back foot, forced to be reactive in the face of Syuri's technique, agility, and aggression. It was a bit of a role reversal compared to how she would normally bully around her opponents. It's actually somewhat rare that someone can get a conventional shine on her. This wasn't quite that, but it was far closer to it than usual, and it was fascinating because of that.

With Maya, things were completely different, and I don't just mean the fact it wasn't an ROH match so there was no Code of Honor (she was quick to shove Maya down and taunt her with her own M/W hand signals instead). This had more of an exhibition or celebratory feel. A playful feel. It reminded me a little of the Willow ROH match where they hit finishers of previous ROH champs. That had thrown me at the time but this didn't. Here, they went counter for counter, tit for tat, cartwheeling through things, rolling around the ring with cradles. There was a showy element to it. I'm not saying that the character of Athena was taking it easy on Maya, but I do think she was perhaps giving her some rope, was letting her shine. You might call it kindness, knowing this was Maya's moment in the sun after all that she'd been through, but knowing Athena, it was probably more like false hope. She was playing with her food, building confidence so that she could snatch it away. After the fact, she might even claim it was magnanimous, but it would have been her lying to herself, the world, the heavens. She held a grudge against Maya for taking her to the limit three times in the last few months, once literally in the Proving Ground. And perhaps even more than that, she now realizes that there is a chance that she is Cronus, not a god but a Titan, with Maya as the Zeus set to someday overtake her.

Of course, Athena is equal parts wrathful and resourceful and she was able to take over on both opponents. With Syuri, it was on the apron, absorbing repeated knee shots to hit a brutal twisting power slam upon it. With Maya, the moment that she Maya stepped just a bit too far, when her confidence was growing just a bit too much and she was maybe about to get one over on Athena, her mentor squashed her like a bug with her Something Evil variation on the floor. No Koji Clutch follow up needed here. It was all about contorting her, crushing her, and opening the door for the damage to follow. 

And the damage she did upon both opponents looked quite similar. With Syuri, it was a bit more focused. With Maya, it was somewhat more meandering, more playing to the crowd, more rubbing it in Maya's face, but it was equally brutal for both. Yet both would come back and get a measure of revenge. Here, however, is where the matches once again deviated. One of the joys of ROH matches and about Athena's run as a whole, is that there's more room to breathe, less need for commercial breaks to help drive the match (Maya came back right when they were returning from break, for instance). Instead of going down into the finishing stretch, the ROH title match was allowed to have an extra level of complexity. Syuri took Athena off the top rope with a hold and started to dismantle her arm. They were already past the conventional heat segment at this point, but it added an extra wrinkle which would make the remainder of the match more interesting. 

Athena would have to both escape submissions and fight back with one arm. Meanwhile, Syuri would shift her focus to bigger bombs in an attempt to put Athena way. As they fought to the finish, they traded those bombs, including Athena pulling out moves she only does rarely, like a Tiger Suplex. Syuri pushed her advantage (both the momentum with which she started the match with and that gained from the damaged arm) and Athena came off as something of a vulnerable champ who could lose at any moment, deepening the drama. Despite that, she was able to hit one last clutch reversal, slipping through the legs for a pumphandle tombstone, setting up the O-Face and her getting her win back and retaining the title. 

With Maya, things were very different. Athena survived Maya's comeback through familiarity, having an answer for everything Maya tried. Yet, Maya kept coming, her refusal to back down shifting Athena into the sort of reactive state she had been in against Syuri. That ended in disaster for Maya, however, as both women found themselves on the floor, and then up on the guardrail, with Athena getting the best of the moment and driving Maya down onto it with a Rock Bottom.

The match opened up emotionally from there. As it looked like Maya wouldn't beat the count (a 10 count here as opposed to the 20 count in ROH), Athena reached out to pull her in. It seemed at first like another magnanimous gesture, Athena giving her protege (though not minion) a chance to win or lose in the center of the ring, to not squander her opportunity on a fluke. She immediately began to berate her over her brother's memory, however.

Why do we watch Athena? Because she's dynamic and complex. Because she is the roiling ocean, an active volcano, because she is a villain that may not be sympathetic, may not be relatable, but that is all the more fascinating because of her strengths and her faults.

At first it seemed like she was offering a hand to Maya to lift her up. Then, as she berated her and Maya exploded upon her, it seemed like she was trying to awaken something within Maya, to try to make her fight all the more, to make her the best she could be. Here's where that familiarity comes into play though. That's not what she was doing at all. She was luring her in. It wasn't that she wanted Maya to be able to win or lose in the ring. It's that she wanted to put her down once and for all, definitively. It's not that she wanted Maya to rise up and fight. It's that she wanted her off her game and frazzled. That's why she was able to catch her in the corner and take her down, setting her up for the O-Face. Maybe if the wind had blown a little different or the sun had shined through the trees Athena may have decided differently and found just a modicum of grace. But it hadn't and she hadn't, and now it was time to end Maya.

The O-Face is one of the most protected moves in wrestling. Barring a fluke roll out of the ring or a foot on the rope, it ends matches. That's important. People love surprise kickouts and artificially propped up exciting finishing stretches, but it's so much better to define something, to make it important, to reinforce its importance, and then, when it really, really matters, when you want to make someone, when you want to highlight her journey and put her over the top, then and only then, to have someone kick out. Only then. Only when it matters the most. You build up capital, build it and build it and build it, and then you pay it off. That's the most powerful tool in pro wrestling.

In some ways, that's a symbol for Athena in general. Some people say she takes up too much of the air in her matches, that she overwhelms and eats up opponents, but she always reacts when things don't go her way. She sells it emotionally, because she expects to win, expects to dominate, and so often, lives up to her own expectations, thus creating that expectation with the fans as well. In that regard, she reminds me of Stan Hansen. By enforcing so strict a baseline, it means any deviation from it carries great rewards for an opponent who can step up and force it. 

Athena hit the O-Face clean. She pinned Maya cockily. Maya kicked out. Athena sold it like the shock, the transgression, the offense, the violation to the order of the universe that it was. She had invoked Maya's brother. She had awoken something inside of her. She had thought it would be something Maya couldn't handle, a means to the end that was the O-Face, but it was instead something that Athena couldn't handle, something stronger than her most dangerous weapon, something powered by love and not hate and therefore, something that Athena could no longer tap into or understand, no matter what she might claim. 

Maya got a fluke small package, but Athena pushed her way out. Then, much like Stan Hansen before her, inevitability, hierarchy, maybe even fate upon her side, Athena reared back to hit a lariat of her own. Maya ducked it, tied Athena up, pressed all of her weight down upon her, and heard the ref count three. 

Post-match, Athena embraced Maya. There's no way to know if that would have been the end of it, if she wouldn't have ambushed her if Mercedes hadn't come down. That's part of what makes Athena so interesting after all, the wild unpredictability. Even if she had spared her, it wouldn't have been heroism but instead another streak of false magnanimity from a fascinating villainess. 

So why do we watch? 

The consistency, the variance, the commitment, the familiarity, the unpredictability, the truth and the contradictions. 

How could we not? Why would we ever look away? 

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