Ivelisse says she’s signed with AEW, talks incident with Thunder Rosa

When last we saw Ivelisse on Dynamite, she and her Deadly Draw tag partner Diamante lost to Thunder Rosa & Hikaru Shida. That match came a week after a much-talked about singles match with Rosa where Ivelisse and the NWA Women’s champ seemed to trading stiff shots and not fully cooperating with one another.

There’s been much speculation both about those September matches, and Ivelisse’s status with AEW. During a Q & A session with Pro Wrestling Junkies (transcription via Wrestling Inc), the 32 year old Chicagoan point blank answered the latter, while indirectly addressing the former:

“I haven’t been able to officially confirm anywhere yet, but I can confirm right now— and I asked if it was okay - that I am indeed signed to AEW.”

Ivelisse was prominently featured on El Rey’s Lucha Underground, and was one of several wrestlers tied up by the show’s Hollywood-style contracts. Situations like that caused her to approach another new company with trepidation, but so far so good with Tony Khan’s:

“So far it’s been so much better than I could have ever imagined. I kind of have a traumatizing experience dealing with past promotions. Anxiety was definitely there, especially taking a chance with Lucha Underground and everything. Oh my God, from the very beginning [with AEW], I’m just in complete awe of how much better and stress-free it’s been in comparison to my other experiences.”

Now, about that match that aired on Sept. 16 with Thunder Rosa...

“I kind of expected this question to come up at some point. I’ve made it a point to not respond to it since the whole thing came up. I won’t comment much about it, but I will state obvious facts according to it. Whenever it comes to pro wrestling, I’m obviously the vet within the equation, so that pretty much should say a whole lot to anyone that knows anything about pro wrestling. They can put two and two together that me being the vet within the equation, and also with the fact that I don’t take people trying to disrespect me - with those facts, it’s kind of self-explanatory what happened, and anything that comes up along those lines.”

Speculation from after her singles loss to Rosa focused on Ivelisse’s professionalism, but she obviously thinks the issue was with her 34 year old opponent’s attitude & behavior. It seems AEW doesn’t completely disagree, if they’ve signed Ivelisse and haven’t promoted anything further with the NWA Women’s champ (which could be unrelated, seeing as Thunder Rosa is signed with a different promotion).

Either way, Ivelisse is a solid addition to AEW’s women’s division. We’ll see if it helps them get more TV time on Wednesdays nights.