After spending a decade in WWE working all over the card as one of the promotion's “Four Horsewomen of the Women's Revolution,” Mercedes Moné is looking to go out on her own and fully establish herself as one of the best wrestlers in the world today. With a match forthcoming against fellow former WWE standout KAIRI at Battle in the Valley, Moné described in an interview with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated just how important chasing her dream was to her decision to jump ship to New Japan Pro Wrestling and how her fans have followed her along the way.
“Life is too short not to follow your dreams and find happiness,” Moné said. “I was brought into this world to make a statement, and now I can do it in New Japan.”
“I have the greatest fans in the entire world. They followed me to Wrestle Kingdom. There was 30% new viewership from the United States, and that’s because of my crew. To be away from them for nine months has been incredibly hard. Now we get to start a whole new chapter and go on a whole new ride.”
Now granted, were the elevated viewership numbers for Wrestle Kingdom 17 exclusively related to Moné's appearance, or could the prospects of watching Kenny Omega in a match with Will Ospreay for the IWGP United States Championship, arguably the “Match of the Year” to this point, help to draw in a few more eyes? Either way, Moné is beyond excited for her first match in an NJPW ring, especially since it's against a familiar foe from her past.
“When the IWGP title was created, I felt a flutter in my heart. I started dreaming about it at night. I get to shine a different light in this male-dominated company. For Kairi and Tam Nakano and so many others, we can showcase what women can do. I’ve been itching for this date. I can’t believe it’s f***ing tomorrow. I can’t wait to get in the ring with Kairi.”
Is 2023 the year of Moné? Or will Kairi hold onto her strap and remain the only woman to be called the IWGP Women's Championship? Fans will have to tune into Battle in the Valley to find out.
Mercedes Moné wants to build a legacy alongside the NJPW women's division.
Taking another stop on her pre-Battle in the Valley promotion tour, Moné discussed how she not only wants to build on her professional wrestling legacy but establish the women's division NJPW has been sorely missing, as she detailed in an interview with Under the Ropes.
This is such a huge honor for me,” Moné said. “It made it a really easy decision to go to New Japan to help kick-start this Women's division for this company. With New Japan being the biggest professional wrestling company in Japan, it was just an easy, easy decision.”
“I grew up watching New Japan, I grew up watching Pro Wrestling NOAH, and all these Japanese Women's wrestling growing up. This was such an easy decision. It's a dream come true for me and I think tomorrow night is just going to create so much magic and so much history for women's wrestling.”
Turning her attention to Stardom, Moné described just how meaningful it is to become a part of such a legendary promotion and how much she wants to bring that style of wrestling to America.
“They have some of the top, top, top wrestlers I have ever seen and I'm just excited to introduce the American audience to the style of Stardom women,” Moné said via F4W. “I think just giving them the opportunity to show what they can do to a global scale of audience, it's just going to open up the doors for women's wrestling all over the world. I think they have the greatest wrestling, so I'm excited to be part of it and just to expand this broad of an audience to something they've never seen before.”
“I'm still a student of the game, I'm not done learning. I still want to wrestle the best, I still want to have the greatest matches of all time and I think with the Stardom women, I can do that. There's so many women that I've been watching that I'm just like, wow, we can create magic. I can create magic with her, I can do something with her. I think, for this year, I am the most excited about my wrestling career than I've possibly ever been.”
You have to hand it to Moné, after spending so much time in WWE she appears all in on Japanese wrestling.
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