Plans for Mercedes Moné in AEW may have been delayed.
We’re just one month into 2024, and the battle for the hottest free agents is already heating up, with both Kazuchika Okada and Mercedes Moné seemingly likely to land in a promotion home sooner or later. As of writing, both appear to be more likely to join AEW, although we now have some interesting information on plans for one of them potentially having been changed.
Speaking on the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer revealed that the race to sign both top stars is coming down to the wire, and in Mercedes’ case, AEW were reportedly set to make the announcement last Saturday, however following the filing of Janel Grant’s lawsuit against Vince McMahon, the company decided to change plans in order to make sure the announcement gets the attention it deserves.
“(Kazuchika Okada) and Mercedes Moné, it’s coming down to the wire. AEW has thought that they’ve had Mercedes for a while. They were originally going to make the announcement on Saturday, and then they realised that was probably not the best day to make the announcement because with the Vince stuff, it was like, no one is gonna be talking about this. So it’s better to do the announcement at a time when people will be talking about the announcement rather than it get lost in the sleaziness of the Vince McMahon story that’s all over everywhere.”
-Dave Meltzer
Interestingly, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful has since denied this report, stating that he’d been told that there was never a plan in place to announce either Moné or Okada on Collision.
I was told there was no plan to announce either on Collision https://t.co/iy1Jlh3ByE
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) February 1, 2024
Elsewhere during the episode, Meltzer touched on the offers that both AEW and WWE have made to Kazuchika Okada, and thus it’ll be interesting to see whether AEW are able to land both major free agents.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on the future of Mercedes Moné and Kazuchika Okada as soon as we hear more.
