There’s no stopping The Megasus.
All Elite Wrestling star Megan Bayne is one half of the company’s AEW Women’s Tag Team Champions as Divine Dominion alongside Lena Kross, having achieved championship gold for the first time in the company this March, a little more than a year after officially joining the AEW roster in February 2025.
AEW, which presents its Dynasty pay-per-view from Vancouver, British Columbia on Sunday, April 12, returns to the Connecticut native Bayne’s home territory soon with Double or Nothing on pay-per-view from Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, New York on Sunday, May 24, followed by its weekly televised spectacular Dynamite emanating from The Liacouras Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday, May 27.
Bayne, who spent time training with Damian Adams in North Jersey, recently sat down with The Pop Break for an interview discussing her range of influences, the impact of her time wrestling in Japan and her thoughts on why she and Kross are a force to be reckoned with.
Recently you’ve found such success in the AEW tag division. What’s that been like, acclimating yourself and your in-ring psychology and your move set to this tag setting, especially with Lena Kross? Because you have found a groove right now.
I think it’s fitting to find my first success here within the company as a tag team champion because, if I were to lay out my career in a timeline, I feel like the main key moments or the biggest turning point for me was when I went to Japan for my first tour of Stardom. You’re around some of the most talented women in the world, working alongside them, so you have no choice but to improve and step your game up, and I think that’s really where I went from being someone who has potential to being someone who can stand there and really hold their own in the ring and is going to make you step up.
And my main reason for being brought over there to begin with was to compete in their tag league tournament. This was in 2023. So I feel like my first real success within my career is when I won that tournament with my partner, Maika. So now, it feels full circle to have my first tangible success within this company to be to hold tag team gold with Lena.
You’ve had a lot of formidable tag team partners, between Maika and Marina Shafir and others. What is it about Lena that makes her such an ideal tag partner for you?
I feel like with me and Lena, we have a lot of similarities. Obviously, we’re physically Amazonian, competitive, dominant women. But, we also have a lot of differences that I think complement each other as well. And I think even outside of the ring, we have very similar mindsets as far as like we constantly want to improve and we have that competitive nature to us, but I think we have it in a healthy way where we each want to boost each other up, push each other forward.
You’ve worked for a number of companies around the world throughout your career – what is it about AEW that makes it your ideal home base company right now?
I think that with AEW there are so many talented athletes on the roster, it’s a good home base because the environment is similar to what I was saying about how my and Lena’s dynamic is; it’s a healthy competitive (environment). There are so many talented people and we all want to put out the best possible product, so we’re all bringing each other up in a positive way, bringing our A game and putting our best foot forward.
How informative was your time in Japan in terms of developing your style, and how much do you think the Japanese style has informed what you’re doing today?
I think that going to Japan was the biggest turning point in my career, because when I went there for the first time, it was for six straight months. Recently, I’ve done some back and forth, like there for a few days, back in America for a few days, but my first tour was six straight months in Japan, every single show. And that’s why I feel so fortunate to be in AEW as well, because we are able to have these working relationships with other companies, like Stardom, and I think they have some of the most driven and talented women in the world.
So, being alongside them, in those six months I didn’t feel myself changing and developing the way that I did, but when I came back to the States I was just an entirely different wrestler; you just have no choice but to step up, because that’s the environment that you’re around. So I feel like my biggest development definitely happened there, and I was able to roll that back over into then it felt like my career was really starting and I was becoming a major player in this game.
In a division that’s filled with diverse styles and wrestlers, you’ve really become the standard-bearer for the powerhouse style of wrestling. Who were the wrestlers that you studied to learn how to use your size and strength as a storytelling tool and really separate yourself from the rest of the locker room?
I think any big man wrestling, I’ve tried to get my eyes on it and see what I can take and make my own. I think that some of the wrestling that I personally like the best is not necessarily just big man wrestling, which I think sometimes can get, in my opinion, a bit stale. I don’t want to just be a big strong girl. I like the athletes who are more versatile.
I would say the obvious ones are Chyna and Beth Phoenix, who were game changers, in my opinion, as far as setting a standard for women’s wrestling goes, and especially in the time period that they were paving their way. But then, outside of women’s wrestling, I really liked Mike Awesome or Brock Lesnar or athletes who can be big and strong and kill you with ease, but also can be athletic and agile and do the more visually exciting, not necessarily acrobatics, but who could just have the best of both worlds.
Because I think there’s nothing more terrifying than this huge being who can easily kill you, but who also has the explosivity and the speed and can flip and can dive and you don’t need to do those things, but the fact that you can, I think, it’s a pat on the back, it’s a brag, not everyone can do that.
I’m an Asbury Park person, and we have to shout out Bam Bam Bigelow in terms of big wrestlers who could move.
Oh, of course. And I think being able to do things that are not expected of you, like having that duality, I feel like it’s just a different kind of feeling. Not that I’m saying that I can just do it all, because I’m still developing too, but when I set my goals and what I want to be like, it is that.
AEW has some big dates in the tri-state area here coming up, between, Double or Nothing in New York and then Dynamite in Philadelphia. What is it about crowds here in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area that really makes them stand out in the wrestling landscape?
I am from the Northeast area, so I don’t want to say it feels more like home, but I feel like when I was developing and becoming The Megasus, I started wrestling in OVW for a couple years, but then I came back and was training in Jersey and doing all these Northeast shows in New York and New Jersey and Massachusetts. And so I feel like, being able to perform now at this level in front of those same crowds and show just what I’m capable of now hits home in a different kind of way.
AEW is a company where double championships are very much possible, someone can find success in the tag division and the singles division at the same time. Is your priority right now solely tag team dominance or do you still have one eye on the singles scene?
I definitely view myself as more than a tag team wrestler. I think I’m absolutely a singles competitor as well, and I definitely think it’s in my future to hold singles gold, but I think right now my main focus is definitely within the tag team division. I mean, Lena and I are the second team to ever hold these titles and as I said earlier, our roster in our division is filled with talented women and athletes, but our tag team division specifically is still developing.
So, I feel like being the second team to ever hold the titles gives us this opportunity that we now get to set the tone and set the standard for teams going forward of what’s expected out of our division. And I think it’s our job and our responsibility, being the dominant team that we are, to set a high standard, one that’s hard to meet. If you’re going to hold these titles after us, then you really need to have something special.
