Mercedes Martinez Chose WWE Over AEW Because The Company Wasn’t Ready

Mercedes Martinez will try to unify the ROH women’s championship against Deonna Purrazzo on next week’s AEW Dynamite. Martinez has become a staple of the AEW women’s division since signing with the company in 2021. Mercedes had chance to get on board much earlier, but uncertainty caused her to choose WWE instead.

Martinez worked a couple of dates in the very early days of AEW. The company was just starting out and was on uncertain ground with no television deal announced. Rather than roll the dice with a startup, Mercedes did what she thought was best for her family.

Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Mercedes Martinez revealed that she couldn’t hold out any more after waiting four months on AEW. To bring stability to her career, she made the difficult choice to go elsewhere. Mercedes ultimately did wind up with Tony Khan’s company, but a lot has changed in the interim.

“I held off as long as I could to try to figure out if I fit in AEW. I talked to Tony. We talked about it publicly. He just didn’t have a TV deal at that time and I’m hitting 20 years in my career. It was, what can I do for my family? What can I do to sustain my career and to keep longevity and to be stable, because you can only do the Indies for so long. You can only work so many jobs, and at that time, I was working two jobs full time, training, plus traveling and doing whatever I can to support my family. AEW gave me the opportunity, but they didn’t give me what I needed at the time or what I wanted at that time. They were still working out and ironing out their details.

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By the time WWE called, I really waited about four months before I signed that contract because I was waiting for AEW. I just didn’t hear from them for about four months. So what do I do to bring stability and bring my career to another level? So it wasn’t that I had to choose, it was just who was willing to give me something that I needed at that time?

I think if I would have held out another two months, maybe I would have been with AEW at the beginning of 2020, but at the same time they weren’t ready.”

Mercedes Martinez recently became the interim ROH Women’s Champion. The true champion, Deonna Purrazzo, will jump from Impact to AEW to decide a unified champ next week. We will have to wait and see if Tony Khan decides to have Mercedes as the female face of ROH.

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