AEW: The Growth of Tay Conti Has Been a Thing of Beauty

Like so many people in the world, the Covid-19 pandemic was a game-changer for Tay Conti.  The NXT star was released from her WWE contract in late April of 2020 along with many other notable stars due to financial cuts within the company caused by the pandemic.

As the world began to shut down it would have been very easy for the 24-year-old Brazilian to take this as a sign that professional wrestling just wasn’t in the plans for her and to move on to other things.  But Conti wasn’t about to give up.

She received the opportunity to show her stuff on All Elite Wrestling’s YouTube show AEW Dark over the summer.  It was there that she sparked a friendship with Anna Jay and they made the semi-finals of the Women’s Tag Team Cup Tournament, before losing to the eventual champions Ivelisse and Diamante.

Whether it was in tag team or singles matches Conti had that indescribable quality that let you know she was on the cusp of bigger and better things.  Her background in judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu allows her to have a very smooth, yet aggressive style in the ring and it didn’t take long for AEW to come to the realization that Conti was definitely a performer that could help elevate their women’s division for a long time to come.

In early September of 2020, just a little over 4 months removed from her WWE release, AEW announced that Tay Conti was in fact, All Elite.

Tay Conti has shown stellar growth in her time with AEW.

Conti made her AEW Dynamite debut on September 8th where she took a loss to Nyla Rose.  Even in a losing effort, Conti was impressive, holding her own against a much larger opponent by utilizing her judo, BJJ, and submission knowledge.

Undeterred by the loss Conti would continue to rack up wins on Dark.  Looking better and better and developing a more dynamic offensive set each and every time out.  This was easily seen in a pair of matches Conti had with another up-and-coming star in Red Velvet.

Their first match took place on Dark in late September and saw Conti submit Red Velvet.  About six weeks later these two would lock up again on Dynamite and Conti used a move where she hoisted Red Velvet up and then dropped her down into an upward knee strike to score the pinfall victory.  And just recently Conti has developed a move called the DD-Tay in which she pins her opponent’s arm into a hammerlock and then drops them on their head in devastating fashion.  This was the move she used to score the biggest win of her young career in defeating Nyla Rose last week on Dynamite.

In addition to her ever-evolving skillset in the ring, Conti has also done well in her character development.

Tay has had multiple offers from Anna Jay and the Dark Order to join their faction, and to her credit, Conti has been able to maintain a close relationship with Jay while still doing her own thing and paving her own road to the top.  Had Conti done the easy thing and accepted the invite to the Dark Order who knows where that story would have taken her.  But being the number 2 woman in the Dark Order definitely would not be as promising as being ranked the number 1 contender for Hikaru Shida’s AEW Women’s World Championship.

Tay Conti’s story is one of retribution, hard work, perseverance, and a never quit attitude.  She has had multiple opportunities to take the easy way out or to take shortcuts to make her dreams come true but she has done so the honorable way and built herself into one of the cornerstones of an extremely exciting AEW women’s division.