Athena calls out the “old, bloated farts” that complain about her physicality in matches

Athena’s match against Jody Threat from the October 12th 2022 edition of AEW Dark: Elevation received some criticism due to the level of aggression from Athena. At the time, Fightful.com noted that Jody “didn’t complain about how the match went” and hadn’t “indicated anything out of the normal publicly.”

During an appearance on Busted Open Radio, Athena addressed criticism of her physicality in recent matches…

“People forget that the girls can hit just as hard as the guys. I have to sit there and see Jon Moxley and [Chris] Jericho and who else? [Wheeler] Yuta and all these guys hit the tar out of each other and I guarantee you, if I was a man, I feel like there wouldn’t be as much backlash or anything like that. It’s all these old, bloated farts that wanna sit there and tell us, oh no, we need to go out there and look pretty and then they complain when it’s a dance, they complain when we hit hard. Get over it. We’re out here to be just as good as the guys and we give it our all, we put in all of this time and effort to hone our craft and I feel like sometimes, we are underappreciated when we do things like that.” (quote courtesy of PostWrestling.com)

Athena is scheduled to challenge Mercedes Martinez for the ROH women’s title at this Saturday’s Final Battle PPV.