Both Shanna and Awesome Kong’s bios were removed from AEW’s roster page over the weekend. According to a report from the Wrestling Observer, both wrestlers’ contracts expired recently and were not renewed by AEW.
43-year-old Awesome Kong (Kia Stevens) has not wrestled since January 2020. In total, she only wrestled 5x with AEW. Kong’s 1st match with AEW was a fatal 4-way won by Britt Baker at Double or Nothing 2019. Her second match was in the Casino Battle Royale at All Out 2019. Kong then wracked up 3 straight singles victories while being managed by Brandi Rhodes but would be removed from television shortly after.
In February 2020, Brandi Rhodes explained Kong’s absence and how it played into the formation of the short-lived Nightmare Collective.
“Awesome Kong was not physically feeling great. And she’s my friend so I would never want to ask somebody to work in a capacity where I know they’re going to hurt themselves so what then happened was more of a greater group discussion of ‘okay well what do we do here’ and the Nightmare Collective came to be,” Rhodes said on Wrestling Observer Live in February of 2020.
As for Shanna, the 38-year-old last appeared on Dynamite in a loss to Britt Baker in January. She had been performing on episodes of AEW Dark and Elevation. Shanna dropped her last match in AEW to Leyla Hirsch on April 7th (aired April 12th).