AEW Star Mercedes Mone Wants to Leave WWE’s ‘Sasha Banks’…

AEW TBS Champion Mercedes Moné is drawing a clear line between her present and her past.

In a new conversation on Marking Out with MVP & Dwayne Swayze, Moné said the goal since signing with All Elite Wrestling has been to establish a version of herself that isn’t defined by her WWE-era persona, Sasha Banks.

“I feel like my first couple months with AEW, I was just still trying to figure out who was Mercedes Moné and make sure it wasn’t Sasha Banks,” she explained on the podcast. “I wanted her to be very, very different so people didn’t want to compare.”

The mission, she added, was to “level up from what Sasha Banks was” and embody “the CEO, the boss of all bosses.”

Moné also shared the moment her new name clicked after leaving WWE. She described a low-key, uncertain night that turned into a lightbulb idea: “I was just sitting in my closet actually, crying, being like, ‘Oh God, what do I do next? Who am I going to be?’” she recalled. “Just like a vision came to my mind of being like, ‘Okay, Mercedes, what is it going to take for you to get back to WWE?’ Well, they got to give me money… Money… I just kept hearing money and I just said Mercedes Money.”

From there, she experimented with the spelling and landed on “Moné.” As she put it, “I wanted to manifest that money. So I wanted that last name as money.”

That rebrand has coincided with a championship run that positions Moné as one of AEW’s most prominent names.

Next up: a title defense. Moné is set to put the TBS Championship on the line at Forbidden Door on August 24 in a four-way match, a stage that further cements the AEW chapter of her career.