Even among the news-filled last few years in the professional wrestling industry, Mercedes Moné made some of the biggest waves.
In the spring of 2022, when she was wrestling in WWE as Sasha Banks, Moné and Naomi walked out during the May 16 episode of Raw, leaving their tag team titles behind. WWE suspended both wrestlers and took the unusual step of mentioning the incident on the air, essentially blaming them for the need to rework the show on the fly.
It was reported at the time that the duo left due to creative differences with Vince McMahon, and Naomi has given credence to that idea simply by the fact that she recently returned to WWE. Still, Moné has been pretty quiet on her reasons for leaving — until now.
Moné appeared this week as a guest on The Kick Rocks Wrestling Podcast and finally spoke a bit about what was going through her mind at the time (h/t Wrestling Observer for the transcription).
Something inside of me told me I needed to go do this and stand up for myself. It was a very hard decision, because wrestling in WWE has been my whole life. If people don’t know, it’s been my whole life. And it’s the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my whole life. But it’s the most proudest. It’s crazy because I would not be sitting here, living the best version of my life and getting to be everything I’ve ever dreamt of. I get to be everything I ever dreamt of and more. You have no idea.
Moné went on to express how proud she was of both herself and Naomi, and that she had nothing but good things to say about WWE in general for giving her the ability to chase her dreams.
She also noted that she has “a lot of unfinished business in wrestling,” some of which she might get to tackle soon. Moné has reportedly come to an agreement to start with AEW, and is expected to debut on the upcoming Big Business episode of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday, March 13 in her hometown of Boston.
[lawrence-related id=46438]