Willow Nightingale has been a member of the extended AEW Galaxy for roughly 18 months when she initially debuted with the promotion as enhancement talent at Daily's Place in Jacksonville all the way back in April of 2021, and yet, she didn't officially become “All Elite” until Friday, October 21st, when she was officially signed to the promotion in an announcement hosted by Tony Schiavone.

How did it feel to see all of that hard work pay off? Well, Lexy Nair of the AEW media team caught up with Nightingale to ask that very question and was met with a pretty spectacular answer.

“Ecstatic, most of all, you know,” Nightingale told Nair. “When this company first kind of got together, I was sitting at home recovering from a broken neck, and it just seemed, like, really cool that something like this would even exist. I’d say about a little over a year ago, I was able to debut in this very building, you know, and just constantly coming back trying to get noticed, trying to have the right people see that I have something to offer, and I just, you know, really – not to be like ‘just persevere and it will come true’ – but like, that’s really kind of the story that was my life for over a year. Just kind of truck through all the times that it felt like the answer was ‘no’ for me, until it became a ‘yes,’ and here I am today. All Elite Willow. Yeah, so really, really happy, really excited, and now it’s time to go party, have a great time, you know?”

For long-time fans of wrestling as a whole, AEW specifically, or even just of Nightingale, who cut her teeth in promotions all over the East Coast before making televised stops in Major League Wrestling, GCW, and Ring of Honor, it's beyond encouraging to see a promising young performer get over with the crowds, improve their in-ring work, and ultimately blossom into legit talents worthy of a spot on the AEW roster page; a page that still doesn't have spots for AEW fixtures like Diamante and W. Morrissey. If Willow continues to work her tail off, the sky is the limit in AEW.