Athena Beats Shida At ROH Supercard Of Honor, Continues Historic Women's Title Reign

ROH Women's World Champion Athena has held her title since Final Battle 2022, and has gone on to become one of the most dominant champions in all of wrestling. However, her latest challenger was former three-time AEW Women's World Champion Hikaru Shida, with their match at Supercard of Honor 2024 being one of the most high stakes bouts of the year so far. Shida made the challenge to Athena earlier in 2024, and recently proved what the champion was getting herself in for with a dominant victory over Rachel Ellering, but how did the showdown play out?

Both women went to war for over 20 minutes, with Athena focusing on Shida's knee throughout the match, as she knew that would weaken her chances of nailing her Katana finishing move. The two women got some near falls in, and it was a fairly even contest right up until the very end of the bout, where Shida went for a running knee strike, but having been worked over for the majority of the match, Athena ducked, kipped up to her feet to nail a thrust kick, and scaled to the top rope. Athena hit her devastating O-Face finishing move to get the victory and remain ROH Women's World Champion. 

With this win, Athena has now been the champion for a total of 483 days (at time of writing) and has amassed an impressive 20 title defenses since dethroning Mercedes Martinez in 2022. ROH's next pay-per-view has yet to be announced, but given the schedule of the company in recent years, it will likely be Death Before Dishonor in July, and if Athena can get past someone like Shida, her next challenger needs to do their homework, as "The Fallen Goddess" shows no signs of slowing down.