Willow Nightingale is one of those rare professional athletes where no matter what you've been going through in your day-to-day life, whenever she pops up on your screen, she will always make you smile.One of the most positive performers in the history of the business, Nightingale is the dictionary definition of a babyface. Her "Smile Anyway Because Nothing Matters" attitude has made her one of the most popular wrestlers not just in AEW, but in all of wrestling over the past few years. On top of that, she isn't just a pretty face with a big smile, she can go toe-to-toe with virtually anyone, male or female, with a devastating offense that harkens back to the All Japan Women's heyday of the 1980s and 1990s, with the influence of stars like Aja Kong and Bull Nakano evident in the way she outmuscles and outperforms the AEW women's division on a weekly basis.At the time of writing, Nightingale is one half of the AEW Women's World Tag Team Champions alongside Harley Cameron as part of The Babes of Wrath, and is enjoying her second reign as the AEW TBS Champion. She is the first woman in AEW history to hold two championships simultaneously, the first woman to win the TBS Championship twice, and if she ever goes on to win the AEW Women's World Championship (which she should by the way), she will become the first woman to hold the female Triple Crown in All Elite Wrestling. In case all of that wasn't impressive enough, she is also a former winner of the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament, and with Nightingale putting pen-to-paper on a new contract with AEW in 2025, she has plenty of time to achieve even more in All Elite Wrestling.Over the past few weeks, we've put together a series of watchlists for some of the finest black wrestlers to celebrate Black History Month. We rolled back the clock to celebrate The Rock's career, detailed the best matches in the career of Swerve Strickland, and now it's time for the babe with the most wrath in AEW to have the spotlight. She's one of the most impressive female wrestlers in the world right now, and already has a catalogue of quality matches, so without further ado, let's look back on some of the best matches of Willow Nightingale's super happy, super positive career!
Throughout the seven years that All Elite Wrestling has been in existence, one question that has routinely popped up is when will the women's division main event a pay-per-view? Toni Storm and Mariah May should have absolutely headlined AEW Revolution 2025, but due to May leaving to go to WWE, their feud ender was placed in the middle of that card. Had Storm's match with Mercedes Mone at AEW All In Texas 2025 happened at any other pay-per-view, that would have probably headlined the show. However, in Ring of Honor, the women's division has headlined multiple pay-per-views since Tony Khan bought the company back in 2022, and this was the first.We all know Athena these days as the "Forever Champion" in ROH. She has held the ROH Women's World Championship since the Final Battle 2022 event and has shown no signs of letting her title leave her sight, but during her first year as champion, she had to deal with Willow Nightingale in a trilogy of excellent matches. Their first came in February 2023 where "The Fallen Goddess" had to fight hard in order to retain her title.Five months later, the two women met in the semi-finals of the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament, and by this point Nightingale had already become the first-ever NJPW STRONG Women's Champion, meaning that she had a lot more experience and a lot more fire under her which allowed her to get her win back over Athena. Nightingale would win the tournament, and just six days later, she was given the chance to complete the trilogy with Athena in what is easily the best match of their series.What makes this match so great is that it's a natural escalation from their previous encounters. The first match was where Athena didn't take Nightingale seriously but still managed to get the win, while the second match she arrived with the same attitude, only for that to come back to haunt her. It's here where Athena arrives with the look of someone who is possessed by the idea of ending this rivalry for good. Nightingale arrives with all the confidence in the world and is firing on all cylinders, wrestling more aggressively and on the front foot as opposed to the other bouts where she needed Athena to make mistakes.Both women commemorate the occasion by paying tribute to the women of the independent scene that paved the way for them to main event such a show, but it's when Nightingale kicks out of the O-Face when the crowd loses their minds. There is a real belief that this is Nightingale's time, especially when she follows it up with the Babe With The Powerbomb, but Athena kicks out. In the end, Athena hits the O-Face and puts the exclamation point on things by forcing Nightingale to pass out in a Crossface. One of the easiest match recommendations I will ever make.
While they probably aren't at the same level as them, Willow Nightingale and Kris Statlander share a lot of similarities with the stories of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn in WWE. They are both incredibly close outside of the ring, have amazing chemistry as partners inside the ring, and even better chemistry when they end up being opponents. By the spring of 2024, both women had firmly established themselves as two of the biggest names in the AEW women's division, but after Stokely Hathaway got in Statlander's head, she turned heel at AEW Double or Nothing 2024 by attacking Nightingale after she had just lost her AEW TBS Championship to Mercedes Mone.Things would escalate throughout the summer as Nightingale would get tag team victories on pay-per-view over Statlander, and even knocked Statlander out of the 2024 Owen Hart Foundation Tournament. However, after Nightingale failed to go back-to-back and lost to Mariah May in the final, Statlander would also get her win back over her former friend in a CMLL World Women's Championship Eliminator Match. By the end of summer, these two needed to settle their score and Nightingale suggested a Street Fight at AEW All Out which Statlander accepted, but in doing so she forfeited her shot at the CMLL World Women's Championship because theMexican promotion didn't want their title defended in such a violent match.Given how this match actually went, it's safe to say that Statlander probably didn't care about any championships going into this one. Both women weren't just out for each other's blood, but they were out to prove a point to the audience as they had the unenviable task of having to follow Will Ospreay's match of the year candidate with PAC. How do you follow a match like that? By beating the absolute snot out of each other.Street Fights and any stipulation matches with little to no rules are always best when they are rough around the edges, and this match is as rough as it gets. Every bump in the opening moments looks incredibly nasty, from Nightingale going through the Spanish announce table, to both women going through the barricade, to Statlander missing a Senton Bomb from the top to the outside, only for her legs to catch Nightingale who was trying to move out of the way, which if anything made it look even more gruesome.These two don't waste any moment in this match as light tubes are smashed, they dive off the stage, Statlander takes a thumbtack bump that will make every woman on earth cross their legs, it just never stopped. The only way this match was going to end was through exhaustion and Statlander managed to wrap a dog collar around Nightingale's face for the referee stoppage in one of the most chaotic Street Fights you will ever see. All Out 2024 is an all around great show, and this match is a big reason for that.
This is the type of match where you need to smoke a cigarette afterwards just to calm yourself down (don't smoke by the way, it's not good for you). Anarchy In The Arena has become one of AEW's signature stipulations along with the Casino Gauntlet, and just when you think that the company can't raise the bar any higher when it comes to this sort of a match, along comes the 2025 match to be as crazy and as wild as any match that has taken place ever.The story going into this match is very simple. The Death Riders had a vice-like grip over the AEW World Championship and everyone in the company had become sick of it. Just when Swerve Strickland looked like he might be the one to save the day, here came The Young Bucks back from an extended break to side with the Death Riders and make life even more difficult for everyone. This created the unusual alliance of Strickland, The Opps, and Kenny Omega to deal with the Death Riders and The Young Bucks, but someone needed to deal with Marina Shafir, the true wildcard in the situation. Enter Willow Nightingale, who had been at odds with Shafir and the Death Riders for a number of months. Nightingale and Shafir were included in the Anarchy In The Arena line ups, all we needed now was the right soundtrack.For what it's worth, I don't think any Anarchy In The Arena match has ever come close to capturing the raw energy of how naturally unhinged the first one was in 2022. That was a match that was full of hatred and spite, which the two bouts that followed in 2023 and 2024 didn't quite capture as they just felt like everyone sat around and went "What's the craziest thing we can do?" This match however is the closest to the 2022 match as this is a showcase of a bunch of heels getting what has been coming to them.It's impossible to list all of the best moments for this match, but since this is a Willow watchlist, her and Shafir get a lot of the spotlight and it's wonderful to see. They are fully integrated into the action as they get their licks in on the guys, with Nightingale taking a Cutter from Moxley and Shafir takes a Snap Dragon Suplex from Omega. There's a great big brother/little sister moment with Nightingale and Powerhouse Hobbs wearing matching shirts and kicking all the ass in the world, and nearly all of the action in the first half of the match is performed to the sound of "Bodies" by Drowning Pool because why wouldn't it be? I would be very interested to see what an all-female Anarchy In The Arena match looks like based off of what Nightingale and Shafir did in this one because they gave it their all right until the very end. The definition of the word fun.
The AEW women's division has sometimes felt like an afterthought when it comes to the company's booking, but 2025 saw strides taken in making the female members of the roster feel as important to AEW as their male counterparts. Not only were Willow Nightingale and Marina Shafir involved in Anarchy In The Arena, they were also involved in the tournament to crown the first-ever AEW Women's World Tag Team Champions, a tournament that saw so many different rivalries formed that there was only one match that could settle so many scores, Blood and Guts.Up until 2025, only the men had competed inside the double-ringed structure, but the November 12, 2025 episode of "AEW Dynamite" opened with 12 of AEW's finest women's wrestlers putting their careers and livelihoods on the line in the first-ever women's Blood and Guts match, and what a match it was. As a way to differentiate itself from the WarGames matches regularly seen in WWE, Blood and Guts takes the violence level to such a ridiculous length that some fans are actively put off by the sight of women bleeding all over the place and hitting each other with weapons. We here at Wrestling Inc. are not those people, and thought this match was absolutely fantastic.We've seen the women of AEW beat the life out of each other and do some horrendous things to each other in hardcore settings (just look at the All Out Street Fight as an example), but they didn't hold back in this one. Nightingale opens the match for her team and busts Skye Blue open to the point where I'm genuinely surprised Skye didn't need a blood transfusion after everything had finished. It does start off a little slow due to the commercial breaks interrupting the momentum of things, especially in the first 10 to 15 minutes, but the action quickly ramps up when more women and more weapons are introduced.Nightingale does become a bit of a background character as the match goes on as people Marina Shafir, Megan Bayne and "Timeless" Toni Storm become more important to the overall bout, but everyone plays their part wonderfully. The Triangle of Madness slipping out of the cage to give their team an even bigger number advantage by getting half of their opponents on the outside. Kris Statlander taking a bump on a bed of nails, and delivering a Samoan Drop to Mercedes Mone off the cage through a table and Mone's belts, and Storm surrendering for her team to prevent Mina Shirakawa from taking any more punishment as she is surrounded by broken glass. A beautifully haunting visual.We've said it before and we'll say it again, the WarGames stipulation is a very simple one to master, and these 12 women nailed it on the first time of asking. Now let's see what they can to top themselves when the second women's Blood and Guts match happens.
Willow Nightingale has taken quite the beating across this watchlist so it's only right that we close this out on a high note with a history making moment for the happiest member of the AEW roster.Three weeks after winning the inaugural AEW Women's World Tag Team Championships with Harley Cameron, Nightingale got the chance to win back the title she only held for a few weeks in 2024, the AEW TBS Championship. Her opponent was Mercedes Mone, a woman she has known for a while and, much like the story with Athena, had faced off with "The CEO" on two previous occasions, making this the trilogy match. Nightingale won the first match back in 2023 when she beat Mone to become the first-ever NJPW STRONG Women's Champion, but that match was overshadowed by Mone suffering a career-threatening ankle injury. The second bout saw Mone dethroned Nightingale in her in-ring debut for AEW at Double or Nothing 2024 to become the new AEW TBS Champion, but Nightingale was more focused with what Kris Statlander did after the bout.Between that match and this one, a lot had changed. Mone had become "Ultimo Mone" by winning 13 different belts and holding them simultaneously, but her quest to become the AEW Women's World Champion had dented her unstoppable aura, which resulted in her losing the ROH Women's World Television and RevPro Undisputed British Women's Championships in the span of a few weeks. To add insult to injury, she couldn't get the job done alongside Athena of all people when trying to dethrone The Babes of Wrath for their newly won tag straps at Worlds End 2025, with Nightingale even getting the pin on "The CEO."All of that leads to this match which shares a lot of similarities to the Death Before Dishonor battle with Athena. The champion enters with a deranged level of determination while the challenger is very much on the attack from the opening bell. Nightingale is on the offensive to start things off but Mone is able to weather the storm and take control of the match for the first half. It's as the match goes on you can see Mone get more and more annoyed at the fact that Nightingale just will not go down, but she is smart enough to allow Nightingale to try and escalate the action by countering a Babe With The Powerbomb on the announce table into a Suplex of her own, and moving out of the way of a rare Nightingale Moonsault.In the end, too many slams and power moves from the challenger means that Mone can't hit the Mone Maker, she can't get a good grip on the Statement Maker, and Nightingale finds just enough of an opening to hit the Babe With The Powerbomb for the feel good victory. Now it's up to AEW to book her like the top champion she has the potential of being.
