AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/23 - 3/29 Part 2

ROH TV 3/26/26

Athena vs Maya World

MD: Throughout Athena's historic (and extremely lengthy) reign, there really have only been one or two logical conclusions for who might take the title from her. Early on it seemed like Willow Nightingale would make the most sense, and then over the span of a couple of Final Battles, it could have well been Billie Starkz. Willow has moved on in a way where it just wouldn't make sense anymore. With Billie, they didn't pull the trigger, and while they could heat things up for a third time, it would take a lot of work to get there. I'm just not seeing it. There have been a lot of other great one-off opponents but nothing that sparked any strong sense of inevitability.

The thing with a reign this impressive is that opportunity was bound to naturally come again in time. That's just the way of it. 

And now it has with Maya World. She checks a lot of boxes. She's young, brash, confident, Texan, inspired by Athena, even a protege, but not really a minion. 

She's the first person ever to take Athena to the limit in a Proving Ground match. For a layperson, that doesn't sound all that impressive maybe, but Athena's wrestled over thirty of them in around three years. For anyone who just drops in on the PPVs or complains without actually paying close attention, the sum of these make up one of the most substantial parts of her reign, where she comes in and absolutely demolishes game opponents, looking very much like the steamroller that she is. 

Look, if I had to distill just one truth about Athena's ROH reign, it's this:

The reign is a horror movie and Athena's the killer. 

There is always a Hitchcockian sense of menace underneath the surface. Athena might offer her left hand daintily for the code of honor, might let out a big "YAY" when things go right, might start things out with athletic wrestling exchanges, might show vulnerability as she gets overconfident or has a limb worked over, but at some point in every match (and so, so many post-matches), the switch flips, rage boils over, and she becomes a monster. 

While this was an excellent match, in watching it, I just couldn't figure out if Maya World was the Final Girl, that last survivor in a horror movie that turns from victim to hero as she confronts the killer, or if she was someone along the way blissfully unaware of the fate before her. 

Does her familiarity with Athena mean that she can counter Athena's best weapons, can even use them against her, that she knows all of her former mentor's tricks and has the confidence in herself to overcome them? Or does it mean that she's lulled herself into a sense of false security because she thinks she knows it all and that maybe, just maybe, even Athena of all people would go easy on her relative to others? Did she maybe think that Athena would go out of her way to beat her but that she wouldn't really hurt her, wouldn't become the monster that would tear her from limb to limb. Not Athena, not to her?

Regardless, Athena, having failed to cut the knees off the competition in a Proving Ground match for the first time, came in thrown and Maya came in ready. 

Maya refused the handshake (and the controlled contact that came with it), dodged Athena's strike to start, jammed an armdrag after hitting one of her own, and vaulted out of the way of a fevered charge into the corner. She followed this with an early flurry: an enzuigiri, the super-sharp Billy Catanzaro full nelson into a backbreaker, and then a fisherman's suplex, just like that. 

Maya forced Athena to escape to the outside, and even there, in Athena's element, she was able to match Athena blow for blow. Right until she couldn't. She had reversed a whip into the stairs, but instead of immediately following up, she set the stairs up for something else; it's one thing to be a little out of your element and another to dive deep under. Athena caught her with a cross-chop to the throat and reverse waterwheel dropped her face first into those stairs.

And thus, the monster started to stir, but only just. Despite the Proving Ground match and the start of this one, much like how Maya possibly couldn't fully comprehend the maliciousness of the person before her, Athena's own ego couldn't let her see Maya as quite that much of a threat. So she trash talked and preened and jawed with the ref, allowing Maya little openings but then cutting her off. Athena hit her tumbling punch in the corner and followed it up with a belly-to-back, giving hope and then squashing it gleefully.

But in playing with her food, she allowed Maya to get just a bit more than she had intended. Athena crushed her in the corner and as she rushed out to set up for another assault, Maya burst out behind her and snatched on surprise waistlock and almost got back into it just from that. Almost. Athena took a few lumps before cutting her off with a flying kick to stop a leap and then knocked her of the ring out with a baseball slide. Maya made it back in but only to end up in the Koji Clutch.

Maya survived the submission by making it to the ropes. She was surviving. She was coming back again and again. She had an answer for so much of Athena's signature offense. It was an affront, blasphemy, hubris even. Through this defiance alone, and despite Athena's advantage at this point of the match, cracks were starting to show.

Athena once again lost her focus. Instead of grinding down, she took the time to slap and berate Maya, and Maya, as she had all match, took every opportunity to fight back. They struck at each other evenly (though Athena's shots had more behind them, but that's true against almost anyone). Maya fought Athena out to the Apron and went for a pile driver. Athena jammed it and lawn darted Maya to the floor with a brutal suplex.

Athena made it in first and allowed herself to gloat as Maya struggled to rise up and beat the count. At this point, it felt like Athena was putting on a show, convincing herself with feigned glee that a countout would be just as satisfying as a pin or submission. The glee faded as Maya made it at the last second.

Back in the ring, they cycled into a strike exchange where Athena got the better. Maya was able to counter a second belly-to-back and move into roll ups. She came out of that on top, using a bridging Fujiwara escape on a double leg, only for Athena to get the better again with a curb stomp.

That's when things took another turn, one that would lead to everything boiling over. Maya avoided the O-Face by charging in and hit Athena's own shotgun dropkick/front tumble punch combo. It didn't look quite as good as Athena's, but it was insult as well as injury and set up an attempt at the ultimate insult as she went for her own O-Face.

Billie came out distract. Hyan came out to even the odds. Eventually, Athena took umbrage on this and slammed into Hyan with a tope. That just let Maya go for her Reinera Slam, but Athena turned it into a roll up and followed it up with a destroyer. Despite that, she was still unable to put Maya away. 

Instead, she started berating her once more. At first, this seemed like it was one step too far, was everything Maya needed to stop playing around, to make that fateful transformation into the Final Girl that could vanquish the monster. She chased after Athena once again, running up the ropes behind her to hit a twisting sunset flip bomb. She followed it up with a gutwrench facebuster not unlike Athena's own, and then went back up again for the O-Face.

It seemed however, that Maya's awakening, admirable as it might have been, only served to fully awaken the monster that was and is and that will forever more be Athena. As well as things had been going for this potential final girl, the final boss had a final form after all. Furious at Maya going for the O-Face not once but twice, she unloaded on her with uncontrolled stomps and strikes. She hefted her up and hit a Tiger Suplex (which is a very rare piece of offense for 2020s Athena; I can't think of another time I saw her use it this decade). She pulled her out of the ring to break her once and for all on the previously positioned stairs. 

Hyan intervened. Billie hit her from behind. They both spilled into the ring. Chaos ensued. Diamante arrived with the belt and Athena used it to clock Maya and hit her own O-Face to end it. An anticlimactic ending, perhaps, one that proved nothing except for that Athena was still champion and Maya was not.

Therefore, I was left wondering. Maya had an answer to so much of Athena's offense. She subverted and stole her share of it. She came close not once, but twice to hit the O-Face. It had taken everything but the kitchen sink to put her down. But then, had Hyan not intervened on the outside, would there even have been anything left of Maya to put away? 

Only at the very end did she really face the monster in its true form, and in that moment, she certainly appeared to come up lacking, arms laced behind her, dropped on her head. 

So is she the Final Girl after all? The one who might end the reign of terror? Or is she just another victim waiting to happen, one that's going to end up as just one more bloody example, maybe the bloodiest example of them all.

Time will tell, but what is clear is that for the first time in well over a year, there is a path that feels possible, a path that might make sense, a light at the end of a tunnel. But that light, like it's been so many times before, might just be Athena on her way to turn yet another great hope into roadkill.