It’s a new era in the NXT women’s division. After reigning with one of the brand’s top prizes for well over a year, Mandy Rose lost her NXT Women’s Title to Roxanne Perez just days after Perez earned a championship match at NXT Deadline. Perez’s victory bookended her 2022 with gold, as she opened the year as Ring of Honor Women’s Champion. This championship victory marks one of the fastest rises in NXT history, as Perez only signed with WWE this past March. The nine months between inking a WWE deal and winning the top prize in her NXT division rivals the accelerated ascents of stars like Kevin Owens and Drew McIntyre, who both won the NXT Championship within a year of debuting for the black and yellow brand.
Speaking on WWE’s After The Bell podcast, Perez emphasized that the emotions she displayed on screen were very much authentic.
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“As soon as that bell rang, I just burst into tears. They were real tears,” Perez said. “I think just like all of the trials and tribulations, everything that I went through since I was 13 years old to get to this moment just started replaying in my head and I was like wow. All of those moments, even the super bad moments, they were worth it.”
As she alluded to, Perez began wrestling training at 13 years old and worked under WWE Hall of Famer Booker T’s tutelage since she was 16. Her officially debut came in December 2018 under the ring name Rok-C. Three years later, Rok-C began wrestling for Ring of Honor, running the gauntlet in the ROH Women’s World Championship tournament as she became the company’s inaugural female titleholder.
Perez’s past successes in ROH and Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling promotion cannot be understated, but she notes that holding WWE gold is a goal she’s had for over a decade.
“In that moment, winning the NXT Championship, just becoming a WWE champion, that was my biggest dream since I was ten years old,” Perez continued. “The fact that it happened, the fact that it was real, it didn’t feel real in the moment. There were just so many emotions that came out of me that night.”
Perez competes on WWE NXT, which airs new episodes every Tuesday on the USA Network.
