WWE released Ember Moon on November 4th, 2021, ending a six-year run with the company that saw her hold the NXT Women’s Championship and NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship with Shotzi Blackheart. The official reason was budgetary cuts, and given how many wrestlers had been released by the company over the previous year, it didn’t come as a huge surprise.
Now speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Moon would discuss the last months of her time in the company and share a lot of backstage information, including how at one point, they wanted her to become a coach. She’d also reveal she wasn’t happy with how NXT had changed and that the company held a meeting about the female wrestlers dressing more provocatively like Mandy Rose for NXT 2.0. Additionally, disclosing that some talents were unhappy doing so but told they had no choice
We’d have to sit through stupid meetings about how we would have to dress sexy. And I remember looking at someone else like, “I cater to children. I am not about to wear a fishnet booty butt cheek shorts because we had a two-hour meeting about how to dress like Mandy Rose.” That’s not fair. Not everyone is going to be Mandy. Mandy is absolutely phenomenal, and she’s an amazing person. But not everyone is Mandy Rose. I started seeing this downslope as soon as Hunter was gone,
Ember MoonI see where this is going between booty butt cheek shorts meeting and them telling girls to alter their gear to make it more revealing. And some people were very uncomfortable with that. And they were like, “Nope, this is what they want. You got to do it.” It didn’t matter how that person felt. And I was like, this isn’t what I signed up for anymore. This isn’t about the wrestling. This isn’t about the art that we create in the ring.
Ember MoonWhile NXT was previously all about work rate and putting on exciting matches, 2.0 is a vastly different product focusing on younger and attractive talent. The fact Mandy Rose is the current NXT Women’s Champion with her Toxic Attraction stablemates Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne being NXT Women’s Tag Team Champion demonstrates this. Given the fact Moon wasn’t comfortable with WWE’s racy approach, it certainly explains why she was considered expendable. However, considering how talented she is, hopefully, it won’t be long until she returns to mainstream wrestling again, with AEW or Impact Wrestling both being a worthy home for her in-ring skills.
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