Mercedes Mone says she was in talks with WWE before signing with AEW

As Sasha Banks, Mercedes Mone once main evented WrestleMania for WWE. And though her contract with WWE had expired, she now says she nearly re-signed with the promotion before joining AEW. 

Mone explained the situation in the latest edition of her Mone Mag. (The edition has been emailed to her subscribers, and should be added to her website here soon.)

“Let me take you all the way back to 2023,” Mone begins. “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,” she continues. “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.”

Mone says she then met AEW President Tony Khan, who immediately expressed interest in doing something with Mone and Willow Nightingale. 

“Then I saw Tony backstage, and he was SO excited to have me there,” Mone writes. “So excited, in fact, that he wanted me to do a backstage segment with… WILLOW!”

Mone says she was excited, but was still a free agent.

“WAIT!” she says. “I am NOT signed. I do NOT work here. I’m just here to enjoy the show!”

So after saying hello to some old friends backstage—naming Amanda Huber, Renee Paquette, Rusev/Miro—and taking her seat.

“And for once… I got to be a FAN,” she writes. “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. But that’s another story.”

“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 wrestling fans celebrating the thing I love most in this entire world.”

Mone says that moment led to her signing with AEW. 

“I was in awe,” she says. “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.”

After winning the Owen Hart Tournament, Mone is set to challenge Nightingale for the AEW Women’s World Championship at All In 2026, back in Wembley Stadium, on Sunday, August 30.