At AEW Revolution 2025 on March 9, Mariah May lost her rematch to Timeless Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s World Championship. It would be her final match in All Elite Wrestling.
May was officially signed to All Elite Wrestling as an announcement on the November 8, 2023 episode of Dynamite, which means she didn’t make it to two full years in the company. Reports have been that she had a two year contract which would mean AEW allowed her to get out early.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer said Mariah May was originally in the plans to face Toni Storm at Y’All In Texas, which would have allowed Athena to face Mercedes Moné. There was a recent report from Fightful that this wasn’t the case and Moné versus Storm has been in the plans since 2024.
I wouldn’t be surprised if both had been on the table and both are just talking to different people who know different things. It makes complete sense if the Hollywood Ending was supposed to be delayed for Y’All In Texas to make it a one year story. AEW loves those. It also makes sense if AEW had a backup plan in case they couldn’t get Mariah May to sign, and once they did the Hollywood Ending in March, May knew there was no chance of her getting that Y’All In Texas match and wanted to leave early with AEW obliging.
Regardless of plans, “The Glamour” Mariah May is no more. She quickly made her debut in NXT, doing their usual routine of not having a name for a week before revealing their new trademarked name. Mariah’s real name is Mariah May Mead. I’ll get back to the name later and why it matters.
Was Mariah May’s AEW career a waste of time? Was it a mistake? Was AEW repeating the mistakes of Jade Cargill? Let’s take a look at the AEW career of The Glamour.
Glamourous Indie Rock & Roll
“Oh, don’t be shy, let’s cause a scene
Like lovers do on silver screens
Let’s make it, yeah, we’ll cause a scene”
– Glamourous Indie Rock & Roll by The Killers
I was a fast fan of the Mariah May act in AEW. I watched a little bit of her in Stardom but simply knew her as someone skyrocketing quick with a great look. She was young and with only a little experience just getting in quick in the Japanese environment. Her coming to All Elite Wrestling left a lot of Stardom fans feeling like she was only scratching the surface of her potential and not getting everything out of her time there.
Funny that.
There was an immediate plan for Mariah May to become involved with Timeless Toni Storm, who had just a month prior started her Timeless gimmick. Storm would win the AEW Women’s World Championship weeks later, which meant Mariah May wasn’t just coming to AEW but was coming to be immediately involved with the World Champion. It was a clear rocket push from the very beginning.
May had her first match in 2024, and we were off to the races with the All About Eve story of the new novice enamoured with the legendary actress to the point of becoming her to steal her position in the spotlight. Mariah May would win the 2024 Owen Hart Foundation Women’s Tournament and with her first taste of success in the company would turn on Toni Storm immediately. This set the stage for All In 2024 in London, England. Mariah, born in London, would win the AEW Women’s World Championship after only eight months of wrestling for the promotion in her hometown against her only rival. It was a rocket push unlike any scene in the company since Jade Cargill.
This is the second time I’ve brought up Jade, so for those who forgot her time in AEW, she debuted in November of 2020 with her first match being her teaming with Shaquille O’Neal to face Cody Rhodes and Red Velvet months later on March 3, 2021. Jade would later become the first TBS Champion in the company by beating Ruby Soho in a tournament final, which means she almost went a year from her match debut before winning a championship. Mariah May took less time and won the top prize.
Jade stayed champion however for over a year, 508 days, and had a 60 match undefeated streak. She only lost the way she lost because she was making her exit from the company and joining the WWE. For over a year, the TBS Championship felt like AEW’s way of making Jade a star and a champion without interfering with the Women’s World Championship.
Unlike Jade, Mariah was made champion eight months after her first match in the company, and it was the top women’s prize.
“It’s not as glamorous as you thought it’d be”
“It’s not as glamorous as you thought it’d be
It’s not as easy as everyone made it seem
Why did it ever feel like a good idea to be alone?”
– Glamorous by Mom Jeans.
Mariah May’s turn on Timeless Toni Storm to become AEW Women’s World Champion felt like a whirlwind and was a whirlwind. It was AEW quickly creating a star off the back of one of their top stars, having her pass the line from women waiting for their first Women’s World Championship in the company for years (Kris Statlander, Willow Nightingale, Yuka Sakazaki, Athena, etc.) and giving her an incredible amount of responsibility in doing so.
This wasn’t the AEW Women’s division of old. There’s a much higher level of expectations in your work now. Mariah May had to meet these expectations. Unfortunately she did not.
I pushed for patience with her back in September of 2024 when people were already questioning if the decision to make her the Women’s World Champion was correct. A large part of that was because I didn’t see this as a territory run where you show up, make a splash, then walk out like it ended up becoming. I thought she was going to be around for a few years, and having this first championship would allow her to learn quick, even if it ended up failing.
It didn’t help that AEW didn’t really establish any new feuds for her going forward. They should have had both Kris Statlander (who was going through a weird babyface/heel thing), Willow Nightingale (who she did face but the feud should have been better), and Hikaru Shida (who they had show up to lose to Mercedes instead of Mariah) ready and lined up, with stories built up to why these matches could mean something.
I also pushed for Willow to defeat Mariah at Full Gear, with Mariah regaining the belt quickly after. My process was that Mariah wasn’t ready for this responsibility. Her plan was only to beat Toni Storm. She was too young and ill prepared to handle the challenges of being Women’s World Champion and would get caught by someone like Willow Nightingale, only for that to open up Mariah to know how to plan and get her championship back.
AEW however was hyper focused on the Toni Storm return. Mariah would beat everyone in front of her, including a strangely rushed Mina Shirakawa program that happened at Winter is Coming instead of Worlds End. All of that played into the return of Toni Storm and getting that program back going.
They never tried to have Mariah May play the notes of Toni Storm’s career anymore, which was a detriment to her run. She was now just The Glamour, running typical heel promos and typical heel actions. They should have had her try to build her own Outcasts and fail. Try to have her get her own Luther and that blow up in her face. Instead they dropped any of that to try to have her build her own persona. It unfortunately did not work.
I don’t think I was wrong to want to be patient, but the people who saw it not working early ended up correct.
“She wants to lead the glamorous life”
“She wants to lead the glamorous life
Without love it ain’t much”
– The Glamorous Life by Prince
The return of Toni Storm also meant a return of Mariah May’s value to the company. As heel champion and a foil to Storm she performed well both in the ring and in the promos. May was mostly reacting, but she reacted correctly. Unfortunately for her that reacting also led to her getting absolutely destroyed by Toni Storm on the promo before Revolution, in a promo that’s going to follow her career for a very long time:
I was disappointed when word got out she was looking to leave to the WWE. It disappointed on multiple levels. For one, it was going to be another wrestler leaving AEW and instead of going right to the end of their contract doing jobs they just get iced until AEW either lets them go or the contract expires. It’s just not the right way to do business in my eyes. I would rather these wrestlers do everything they can to do business, put over the roster, then leave. At least for Mariah, she left after two losses.
Second was the fact this was, much like Stardom dealt with, Mariah May once again leaving far before her potential. She only told one story in AEW and only had one run. We never got babyface Mariah May beyond the crowd appreciating her with Toni. We never got heel Mariah May having to find purpose outside of Toni Storm’s shadow.
I also respect Mariah May as a wrestler and thought she was doing it right. She went to Japan to properly learn how to work. That work got her to AEW, where she could wrestle some of the best women in the world. It felt like she was carving a reputation as a pro wrestler and not just a Sports Entertainer. But that wasn’t the purpose or goal. The purpose was to get to WWE, and she found a way to do it.
End of May
“Every memory feels like a stolen dream
The sun breaks through a catch a view of 23
And for a moment there the sky was blue and I could see
Oh, it’s nothing like you said it would be”
– End of May by PRXZM
I asked a few questions at the start of this. Was this run of Mariah May’s a mistake? A waste of time? A repeat of Jade Cargill?
I don’t look back on this as a mistake at all. In fact, I think it’s All Elite Wrestling being prepared for this better than they’ve been prepared in the past. Mariah May was self contained to a single story: Timeless Toni Storm. She got to beat a lot of the AEW roster in singles matches building herself up, but also lost to Thunder Rosa, Deonna Purrazzo, Saraya, and is one of the few AEW champions to lose an eliminator when she lost to Anna Jay.
I mentioned earlier about territory runs and this was honestly a modern version of that. I know it’s hard to conceive at times in modern wrestling where wrestlers get locked to contracts and stick around forever and usually wear out their welcome instead of leaving with gas left in the tank but this used to happen all the time in the territory days. It used to be a territory would bring in someone from another territory that needed a fresh start. They would quickly work against the champion of that territory. The company did everything they could to heat them up so the champion would eventually beat someone with real potential behind them.
That’s how I see the Mariah May run. AEW knew there was a very good chance she was here for a good time and not a long time. So they gave her a run that would be good to convince her that she’d be treated well in All Elite Wrestling without exhausting everything they could do with her beyond the two years. If she leaves? She leaves. If she stays? You didn’t give up everything she could do.
AEW fans have already had silly debates online how this looks bad because they can’t re-sign someone to their second deal. I hate to tell some AEW fans this, it’s blunt, but they need to hear it just like WWE fans once had to: wrestlers are not your slaves. They are allowed to make decisions based on their own personal goals and aspirations. It doesn’t make AEW look bad if someone leaves and it doesn’t make that person bad for leaving. She had a contract. She no longer has a contract. That’s it. That’s all.
Is going to WWE the right decision? Time will tell. I will say that I appreciate that she isn’t Mariah May anymore. She left that name in All Elite Wrestling. She can follow her dream to work in WWE and when it inevitably doesn’t work out (because it rarely does,) she wouldn’t be returning to AEW as the character she plays in the WWE (or NXT if she ever gets out.) She would return as Mariah May.
Making the decision to go to WWE at 26 means she could work three years in WWE and if the dream doesn’t pan out? She could be returning to AEW before she’s 30. There was another wrestler in this position a few years ago: Maxwell Jacob Friedman. I suggested this about him so I’m sticking to it with Mariah. Max could have left, had a big money run in WWE, and come back. That’s now open for Mariah May.
“I sentence you to a lifetime of mediocrity. Your life will continue. Your career will continue and it will be good but never great. People will like you but never love you because the star that you are will never compare to this monster that you’ve become. So you will dwindle, be replaced, and be forgotten. Then one day many years from now someone will ask: Whatever happened to Mariah May? She found out what happens when you try to kill God.”
– Timeless Toni Storm to Mariah May
That promo by Toni cursed the career of Mariah May. The only way to remove the curse is to one day return to the name of Mariah May.
