Formerly The Boss and now The CEO, Mercedes Mone is ready to take her talent globally. She appeared at NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 17 event earlier in the month and already has herself a championship bout against a familiar competitor KAIRI. The IWGP Women’s Champion will put her gold on the line against Mone at Battle in the Valley next month.
Mone left WWE as Sasha Banks last May and since then she has kept busy outside of the ring. This allowed many fans to speculate when she would return, where she would return, or if she would even step foot back into the ring again.
When asked about the thought process to jump from WWE to Japan, Mercedes said, “I’ve been working every single day since I left there. I’ve been making movies, making TV shows, magazines, modelling, I haven’t stopped. But wrestling has always been my number one love, and there was no soul searching involved in coming back to wrestling. I went to Mexico for a month in October and lived there.”
She comments for the first time since leaving WWE stating that she has acieve what she wanted there and now it is time to expand her dream on an international scale.
“Seeing Manami Toyota and Akira Hokuto, Aja Kong, all these hard hitting matches, and it was like ‘wait, there are matches where women are outperforming and having better matches than the men?’ They were hitting just as hard as the men, having these 30 minute long five star matches. I was so amazed by them that Japan became my number one goal even before WWE. So I managed to achieve what I wanted to achieve in WWE, and now I get to live out this international dream,” she said. “I’ve been saying ‘Moné makes the world go round’, and I mean that. I’m thrilled to start this in Japan, and with NJPW and STARDOM. STARDOM, to me, has the best women’s wrestlers in the world, and I really want to cement my legacy with my wrestling fans, to cement my name with the greatest of all time. I’m ready to f**king go.”
Although NJPW and STARDOM are run by the same owner, they do have separate shows. Only recently has NJPW started incorporating the women of STARDOM and this is why the IWPG Women’s Title was created. KAIRI is the inaugural champion.
“I’ve only gotten to experience WWE Evolution as an all women’s show. I’ve never been part of an all women promotion like STARDOM is, so that will be a first for me. I’ve always been mixed with the guys and sharing, what, maybe five minutes of a three hour weekly TV show. So I’m really excited to be a part of STARDOM and be a part of all women’s shows. I’m intrigued to see what it’s like and how it all works, but it’s been working for Japan for a very long time, and being involved with all these potential fresh matchups makes me excited about the future.”
For the full interview with NJPW you can click here.
