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

By: Thom Fain

The “Toxic Spider” Thekla remains your AEW Women’s World champion.

For context, the match at Forbidden Door was built on the feud between H.A.T.E. and Neo Genesis created in STARDOM over the past two years.

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.

Thekla retained the AEW Women’s World Championship Sunday 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.

STARDOM’s Okada, the same president who invited her back to the company after Donna Del Mondo dissolved, got to watch her remind everyone exactly who she is.

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.

Thekla won at Forbidden Door in San Jose 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 carried the emotional weight of representing STARDOM as a whole, made you believe she could finish the job.

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. After the match backstage, the president was visibly bruised. As of yet no charges have been pressed against his former employee.

For now it appears the chapter between her and STARDOM still does not appear to be finished.