Details regarding Mercedes Moné’s arrival to AEW.
The newest signee to All Elite Wrestling is Mercedes Moné. She arrived to the company at the ‘Big Business’ edition of Dynamite in her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts.
Alongside Mercedes’ family in the front row was Keven Undergaro, who is her advocate and Undergaro refers to Mercedes as his client. He spoke about her being a part of AEW when he solo-hosted Maria Menounos’ Heal Squad podcast.
He first touched on the beginning of his communication with Mercedes and it came after her and Naomi left WWE. Undergaro said Snoop Dogg and another mutual friend was a bridge between him and Mercedes so they could connect. He talked about how a lot of healing needed to happen and he invited Mercedes to come stay with him and Maria Menounos.
That business (wrestling business) in many ways is worse (than show business) because it’s not like you have other directors you can work with or other studios you can work with or other networks that you can work with. It’s one major ticket in town. At least their was for quite some time so, it was a very bold move and her (Mercedes Moné) cousin happens to be Snoop Dogg and she called Snoop for help and Snoop called a mutual friend of mine, of ours and who works with a lot of celebrities and their brands and she went to that friend for help and the friend was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with a wrestler but I know who’s crazy enough that probably does’ and so, I told Mercedes, ‘Hey, I get what’s up. I know what happened, and why don’t you just start by coming to Connecticut to stay with Maria and I and let’s just decompress a little bit and see where you’re at mentally.’ These situations, you always have to work on the foundation or at least I do, before you rush to start making all the fixes and saves, and… it’s definitely been a marathon rather than a sprint and lots of seeds being planted in the last year-and-a-half, a lot of healing that took place. A lot of things had to get fixed and yeah, I had to build up just even her foundation because you know, you can’t build a house on sand, people. So, whether it was her finances or taxes, all those aspects of her business, representation. Yeah, it was a lot, it’s been a lot.
Undergaro confirmed there were conversations held with WWE and they made a ‘generous’ offer for Moné to return. He then stated that AEW made their offer and ultimately, Mercedes went with her gut and chose AEW.
A few months ago, we get a call from her old home saying they wanted her back and they put out a very generous offer, but the rival company that exists now also put out an offer and Mercedes (Moné) is really smart, she went with her gut and she felt the other offer was right and I agree with her. It was just a hella lot more and not money necessarily but, opportunity, creative and mental health and one of the things I got to do was write her opening song and that was a lot of fun to do.
He circled back to speaking about Mercedes walking out of WWE and then venturing into her post-WWE run. He confirmed the nature of her injury at NJPW STRONG Resurgence and said she broke her heel.
I obviously have a little baby daughter but, this is the closest thing I have to a daughter and to see her come out (at AEW Big Business) and know what she went through. The courage she had to walk out, stand up for herself, stand up for the rights of other women and then she broke her heel, when they said her career was over. That was after we had to deal with that and just to see her come out and radiate all this energy and when I say it was just a standing ovation that she could’ve even kept going longer if she wanted…
Moné is using a new theme for her AEW run titled ‘CEO’. Keven said there was a situation with her music that resulted in a member of their team ‘tearing him a new one’ for a move he made.
Undergaro said the move had to be made because if it didn’t happen, there would not have been a song for her at Big Business. He added that Moné owns the ‘CEO’ theme. Undergaro became heated about the aforementioned situation but Maria Menounos calmed him down and he received support from his brother Joe, who now works security for Mercedes.
Whenever they (AEW) announced Boston, we all had butterflies in our stomach but leading up to it, the day before I think it was, the day before we were supposed to premiere, someone from her (Mercedes Moné’s) team — I should say our team — but, came in and kind of tore me a new one about something I did to facilitate the deal for the music, without getting too into it. But I was right because there would be no song Wednesday night if I didn’t do what I did. The song wouldn’t have played and she would have missed a giant opportunity and it’s a song that she owns and it was the best thing but I think ego got involved because I had to step in and wear another hat that I didn’t normally wear but, you have no choice and so, it really came down hard on me and then started even bringing other people to come down on me and you know, the Boston-Italian came out. Not to them. I really have learned, honestly, I always say respond, don’t react but I wanted to react. I wanted to just be like… you can fill in the blanks (Undergaro chuckled). Crazy Italian from Boston. How do you think we’d react? But I didn’t. Luckily I had Maria (Menounos), so I called Maria and she was able to say, ‘Okay, let it go Kev. But you can’t show that side…’ It really rattled me and thank God my brother Joe, who does security for Maria but also now does security for Mercedes. He was in town so he was like, ‘Wait, what? What’s going on?’ And you know, Joe has a way of not — he’s got the amazing case of the don’t cares. He’s spectacular about that and he got me to that place of like, hey, don’t let this ruin your thing. This is your time, you’re the one in control of the deal. You ultimately made it all happen…
Mercedes opened and closed AEW Dynamite: Big Business. The closing portion saw her save Willow Nightingale from a beat down by way of Skye Blue and TBS Champion Julia Hart.
Moné is scheduled to appear on the 3/20 Dynamite in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Heal Squad with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
