Originally published at Stokely Hathaway details how pairing with Kris Statlander & Willow Nightingale came to be, reflects on The Firm
Hathaway also shares details of his time with The Firm.
Present day on AEW television, Stokely Hathaway is paired with the duo of Kris Statlander and Willow Nightingale. He detailed how that came to be as he was being interviewed by Israa of WrestlePurists.
Hathaway said it was an idea of his combined with an idea from AEW Wrestling Administration Coordinator Will Washington. They then presented the idea to Tony Khan.
So, it actually was my idea combined with a Will Washington idea (to pair with Kris Statlander & Willow Nightingale) and then we presented it to Tony (Khan) and he loved it and then it kind of just snowballed from there so, I think it was one of those pitches, it helped everyone involved so, Willow has been rocking and rolling and Statlander had that great match with Riho and you know, as you saw on Wednesday, the women main evented and it was a great match.
During his time in AEW, Hathaway was a member of The Firm that was formally introduced at AEW All Out 2022. Towards the backend of the group’s run, Hathaway shared that he was supposed to be written off of AEW TV in March 2023 following his match against HOOK.
His write-off would lead to his Ring of Honor run. Hathaway added that the write-off was delayed because he was needed for The Firm Deletion match.
The initial purpose of (The Firm in AEW) was kind of just negated after a couple of weeks so, it was one of those things where what do you do? You put all these people together. So we needed to stick together and do what we could while we could. So, I was happy with how it ended. I think once we got into the Jungle Boy-HOOK storyline, I think that’s when we really hit our groove. But, it actually, for me, was supposed to — I think it was gonna end in March because me losing to HOOK, that was gonna be my write-off until I went to Ring of Honor but, it halted a bit because I think, oh, there’s the Final Deletion match which was a lot of fun and I think I — someone told me, I can’t remember exactly who but like, I needed to do that match to make it even because they didn’t have enough people to put in it so that became kind of the ending and I thought, okay, everything ended full circle. We started this with Matt Hardy, we ended it with Matt Hardy and Jeff (Hardy) and that was pretty wild to say that I wrestled with The Hardy Boys in their house so, I left The Firm with a lot of fun moments and gems which I was very, very appreciative of.
On the topic of who else Hathaway would like to work with on-screen, he spoke about the idea of being paired with Powerhouse Hobbs.
Yeah (I’d be interested in working with Powerhouse Hobbs). I mean, Will Hobbs is just fantastic. I mean, that dude is just a phenomenal athlete. He can pretty much do anything. If we were brothers, he got all the good genes. I got all the bad ones so, Will Hobbs, if I was a professional wrestler, he is what I would want to be so, yes, of course I would love to work with him. I think he’s in good hands right now but if that opportunity presents itself, yeah, I would absolutely take advantage of it.
There was a segment on the 3/20 Dynamite featuring Hathaway, Statlander, Nightingale and Mercedes Moné. To get a recap of that, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit WrestlePurists with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.