Former H.A.T.E. Enforcer, Current AEW Women’s Champ Thekla Dispatches SLK At Forbidden Door

By: Thom Fain

For now, Thekla remains your AEW Women’s World champion.

Let’s take a moment to consider something before we get to the disappointing results of the match itself: Thekla did not leave STARDOM on good terms. She left STARDOM because she lost a match to Sayaka Kurara, refused the stipulated consequence of joining Cosmic Angels, and instead attacked STARDOM President Taro Okada on her way out the door.

Rather than quiet resignation, the Austrian punk went for arson as she fled the building.

That context matters, because on Sunday at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door in San Jose, Thekla retained the AEW Women’s World Championship against Starlight Kid — and then, in the moments after the bell, cut off the challenger’s mask, spat on it, rubbed it in Okada’s face, and beat him with it. The woman who was fired from STARDOM for attacking the president attacked the president again. The institution that invited her back through the terms of a business partnership got to watch her remind everyone exactly who she is.
The match itself was built on the fault lines that H.A.T.E. and Neo Genesis created in STARDOM over the past two years.

When Thekla returned to the company in April 2024, joining Natsuko Tora’s Oedo Tai before it reformed into H.A.T.E. — Harass, Abuse, Terrorize, Eradicate, in case the acronym left any ambiguity — she made her intentions explicit: she was back, she said, to “completely eradicate idol culture.” Starlight Kid, who built Neo Genesis on the opposite philosophy — fighting spirit, generational pride, a kind of joshi traditionalism — is about as pure an embodiment of that idol culture as STARDOM produces. This was not an accidental matchup. Someone with a very good memory put this together.

Thekla won with a spear into back-to-back stomps, and the actual finish almost felt beside the point by the time we got to it. The match was excellent — arguably the best of Thekla’s AEW title reign, and a showcase that announced Starlight Kid to an audience that had no idea how good she was. She was extraordinary. She carried the emotional weight of representing STARDOM as a whole, and she made you believe it, which is harder to do than it sounds.

But the story is what comes after… The mask on the floor, the look Okada’s face. The fact that STARDOM can’t really retaliate without AEW’s cooperation, and AEW has no particular reason to discipline its champion for making compelling television.

Thekla has now attacked the STARDOM president twice — once as a consequence of losing, once as a consequence of winning. You have to respect the consistency.

The chapter between her and STARDOM still does not appear to be finished.