Mercedes Moné Says She Was In Talks With WWE At The Time Of AEW All In 2023, Tony Khan Wanted Her To Do Segment With Willow Nightingale

A look back at the untold history between Mercedes Moné and Willow Nightingale.

One of the marquee bouts set for AEW All In 2026 is Mercedes Moné challenging Willow Nightingale for the AEW Women’s World Championship.

Moné dove into her history with Nightingale and more in her latest Moné Mag write-up. She looked back on her appearance at All In 2023, where she watched the show from the crowd. She noted that she was still in conversations with WWE at the time.

“Let me take you all the way back to 2023. 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. 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. I love history. I love being around history, and even more than that, I love being a part of it. The second I got to London, something just felt different. The energy was right.”

Moné went on to add that AEW President Tony Khan wanted her to do a segment with Willow Nightingale, although Moné was not signed.

She said at that point, she had not been able to sit back and watch a wrestling show as a fan in quite some time, except for the time when she dressed in a disguise to go support Bayley at WrestleMania.

“Then I saw Tony backstage, and he was SO excited to have me there. So excited, in fact, that he wanted me to do a backstage segment with… WILLOW! I was like— WOWOWOWOW. WAIT! I am NOT signed. I do NOT work here. I’m just here to enjoy the show! Backstage, I got to see so many familiar faces—Amanda Huber, Renee, Rusev—and I got to meet so many new people too. Then I was escorted to my box seats, and for once… I got to be a FAN. 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. From the way I was treated to the moment I arrived at Wembley, I remember thinking: Wait… I Love this!”

On the lead-up to All In, Moné was in action on the 8/15 AEW Collision and scored a win over Zayda Steel.