After missing nearly five months of action due to injury, Red Velvet concluded her 2025 in style by defeating Mercedes Mone to become the first-ever two-time ROH Women’s World Television Champion at ROH Final Battle 2025. Mone had originally dethroned Velvet on the November 19, 2025 episode of “AEW Collision,” unifying her Interim title with Velvet’s, but since Final Battle, Mone gone on to lose two more of her titles to Alex Windsor and Willow Nightingale respectively. Velvet was a recent guest on “AEW Close Up” with Renee Paquette where she was asked about wrestling Mone for the first time, something she called a full circle moment given that “The CEO” inspired her to get into wrestling.
“I started watching wrestling when I was nine, but before I got into wrestling, I watched Mercedes, and she was 90 pounds when she started, and she inspired me and that was all it took. I was like ‘She’s beautiful, small like me.’ She was thriving and it was just like ‘That’s me, I can do that.’ So for this moment to go full circle, it was full circle before that because I called her out at the Final Battle scrum…and I was like ‘I’m about to be that person I don’t care, bring her you know? She’s wrestling everybody everywhere.’ When she came out to the company I was in, like ‘Yes, this has a been a dream match that I’ve wanted,’ and just like a learning experience you know? I will never take away what she’s done.”
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Velvet explained that she was also never going to talk down to someone who inspired her so much, but the fact that fans always tell her that she reminds them of Mone made Velvet want to prove everyone wrong. She even went as far as to reveal that people were private messaging her saying that she would lose to Mone, but she doesn’t back down from anyone, and after telling the internet trolls to get lost, she did what she said she was going to do and proved everyone wrong.
Please credit “AEW Close Up” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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Read the original article on Wrestling Inc.