On anniversary of their industry-changing match, Mercedes Moné tells Bayley ‘Let’s do this again someday’

Sami Zayn started a conversation yesterday (Aug. 21) on the anniversary of his two-out-of-three falls match with the wrestler formerly known as Cesaro in WWE NXT.

One of the things that Zayn calling that match industry-changing led to was fans bringing up other NXT matches from the 2010s they felt deserved that designation. Among the ones mentioned most often was Bayley and fka Sasha Banks’ TakeOver: Brooklyn classic.

Personally, while I backed Sami’s claim about his match with Claudio Castagnoli, I don’t think there’s any question that Bayley’s victory over the wrestler currently working as Mercedes Moné was more influential. As it celebrates its eight anniversary today, we’re just beginning to see young women & men who were inspired by that 2015 match to chase the wrestling dream. Their numbers figure to grow exponentially over the next decade-plus.

Will they, or any of us, get to see another match between those two Horsewomen? Mercedes famously walked out of WWE in 2022, eventually taking her services to New Japan Pro-Wrestling. She’s currently recovering from ankle surgery, but we don’t know much about how that’s going — or how long she’s committed to NJPW once she’s cleared to return.

Bayley is still with WWE, currently backing the Women’s champion, her Damage CTRL teammate IYO SKY. She’s supported her one-time rival and forever friend Mercedes in all her post-WWE outings, but has never given up hope she’ll return. In June, Bayley told Gorilla Position she begs Moné to come back “every day”.

That’s all context to this exchange between Bayley & Mercedes on social media as they marked eight years since the day they changed the industry at Barclays Center:

If Mercedes Moné never becomes Sasha Banks again, that doesn’t mean she’ll never wrestle Bayley again. The quote snippet mentioned above continued, “you know what — it doesn’t matter where it is. It doesn’t matter how it happens. I would love to one day step back in the ring with her.”

Sounds like even if it has to be Pamela Martinez vs. Mercedes Varnado, we haven’t seen the last of this rivalry. We’ll be there for it... even if it won’t mean quite as much as that magical match in Brooklyn.