Trivia / Ember Moon

• Creator Breakdown: Her last year with WWE was a non-stop barrage of unhappiness for her; she was sent down to NXT to repackage and put in a tag team with Shotzi Blackheart. Although not a fan of being in a tag team, she did her best with it, and she was very saddened when they were split up (and the creative team on the main roster didn't even know they'd been in a tag team in NXT). After a disaster of an Aborted Arc (see below), she would constantly find herself venting to her makeup artist about how unhappy she was. Upon WWE telling her that she was being taken off TV to act as a coach, despite insisting she'd done "nothing wrong", she informed them that she was so broken by this treatment that she was going home and they could release her if they didn't have anything for her.
• Dye Hard: She added blonde into her hair in 2016, to be replaced with silver and purple in 2017. She also had to do it herself because it was so specific.
• Hostility on the Set: Athena got herself barred from several Texas promotions early in her career for pissing off other wrestlers. In particular out of Anarchy Championship Wrestling for a dispute with Rachel Summerlyn, since she and Summerlyn had a fairly public burial of the hatchet, and Athena went on to be one of ACW's better known women wrestlers from there.
• Playing Against Type: Prior to 2013, she was normally booked as a heel. But growing respect online for her talents in the ring saw many promotions - notably SHIMMER - giving her a Heel–Face Turn.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: She was originally slated to be in a Fatal 4 Way for the NXT Women's Championship against Asuka, Ruby Riott and Nikki Cross. In the segment setting this up, she was thrown out of the ring by Asuka and injured her shoulder. The match was changed to a triple threat. It was thought that she was originally going to win the belt in that match, by pinning one of the other competitors to preserve Asuka's undefeated streak.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Beginning in 2023, she began making her entrance to "Athena" by Plush in AEW and ROH.
• What Could Have Been
  • She took a second job after losing her college soccer scholarship to a knee injury as a cocktail waitress and through it became a valet to the bouncer who worked professional wrestling matches on the side. While Athena claimed at Magnificent Ladies Wrestling in Memphis that she always wanted to join the wrestling business, she wouldn't have joined it so early, much less dropped out of college for it if not for that injury.
  • General Skandar Akbar was not her first choice for a trainer. But her first choice for a trainer decided to take her money and run.
  • SHIMMER was initially going to evaluate Athena in a dark match...sparkle showcase, but MsChif helped convince them to let her debut right away.
  • She applied for TNA's Gut Check, but after a controversial reveal with the voting — where a glitch allowed for fans to put in multiple votes for the same wrestler — publicly withdrew from the competition.
  • WSU was resigned to putting their title belt on Athena after LuFisto came down with food poisoning. But they had already booked a match between the two and ended up having to put the belt on LuFisto anyway because Athena ended up getting a concussion.
  • On the independent circuit Athena was famous for her resistance to and ability to quickly bounce back from injury. This did not prove true for Ember Moon in WWE, halting any plans to seriously push her despite a program with Asuka initially indicating such.
  • After being split from Shotzi Blackheart, she pushed for a storyline involving a losing streak that would lead to her turning heel. Her matches kept either getting cut from the card or she'd have personal issues (such as sudden allergic reactions) and then would miss TV for weeks. By the time she had a match in which she was told she was teasing a heel turn on 205 Live, she didn't even know if she had properly turned. She was then told that Vince wanted her to revert to her old character with the red ombre hair colour so she could turn heel in that persona. When she arrived at the arena and having filmed a test video, she was suddenly told that she was being pulled off TV "indefinitely".
• Writer Revolt: Shortly after Triple H left, she recalls a two hour meeting about the higher-ups wanting the women to dress Hotter and Sexier. She refused, as she felt her character catered more to children.
  "I am not about to wear fishnet booty butt cheek shorts because we had a two hour meeting about how to dress like Mandy Rose. That's not fair. Not everybody is going to be Mandy. Mandy is absolutely phenomenal and she's an amazing person, but not everyone is Mandy Rose."