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YMMV / Ember Moon

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  • Awesome Ego: She was arrogant enough to call herself The Wrestling Goddess, knew she was the best and fully backed it up in the ring.
  • Awesome Music: "Feed The Flame" was voted Best Theme of 2016 by Lethal WOW.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • On NXT big time. While it's agreed that she's very talented in the ring, her mic skills are commonly criticized and some fans find it hard to get invested in her character — because she hasn't been given much to work with in terms of storylines. Her feud with Asuka is considered a primary example of how Ember Moon's actions and success are largely treated as a given with very little meat to enjoy before seeing the bones.
    • Doubled down on once she won the NXT Women's Championship. Given that the match included Kairi Sane, Peyton Royce and Nikki Cross, all of whom are arguably more popular than Moon, there was an understandable backlash from some parts of the fanbase when Moon was chosen to win the match. The fact she pinned Cross to do it created a Broken Base all its own considering her popularity.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse
    • Athena found herself becoming a darkhorse of any promotion she wrestled for. In SHIMMER she became a fan favourite from just one weekend's worth of matches.
    • While already having a considerably well-known following in NXT, her reputation has become substantially larger upon her main roster debut, with many wanting her to have a bigger presence in the Raw women's division.
  • Fanon: Reese was taken to be Athena's Canon Name by fans, as it is her real life last name. PGWA used it officially, just to make sure no one mistook this Athena for the one who hadn't been in the fed for two years by that point.
  • Growing the Beard: Before her ACL injury, she had some detractors who complained that she was too 'indie' with how she wrestled. Some accused her of being a Spot Monkey. After the injury, she showed that she had a good grasp of Wrestling Psychology too, and earned unanimous respect for her work afterwards.
  • Narm: Her mic skills can lead to a lot of this in her promos.
  • Rooting for the Empire: The fans of SHIMMER were perfectly aware that Athena was a poor sport whose attitude was not to be encouraged, whose accomplishments should not be celebrated, they just didn't care and wanted to see her wrestle. Her Heel–Face Turn did nothing to derail her popularity, and seemed to make it more pronounced by actually giving fans a reason to sympathize with Athena in addition to gushing about how cool she was.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Ember Moon and Asuka both had undefeated streaks on NXT and were built up as rivals. Ember also lost out on a title match due to a legit injury from Asuka. Do WWE build their title match at all? Nope — the sole build was a contract signing in William Regal's office. NXT were criticised for treating the match as a formality rather than a must-see bout.
    • Strongly subverted come their second match at TakeOver Brooklyn III. It was widely praised as one of the best women's matches the company has ever seen.
  • X-Pac Heat: The reason Athena was a heel so often early in her career is because her attempts to be a baby face just turned fans against her, viewers feeling she wasn't nearly as good as she thought she was. But gradually she got better, and while people still thought her ego was overblown, they started to enjoy her matches, leading to Rooting for the Empire and eventual face turns.

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