Booker T Reacts To Mandy Rose Being Released By WWE: “A Bad Situation”
Booker T has given his thoughts on WWE releasing Mandy Rose one day after she lost the NXT Women’s Title.
The December 13th edition of WWE NXT on Tuesday night had a big title change as Mandy Rose’s 413-day reign as the NXT Women’s Champion came to crashing halt when she lost the title to 21-year-old Roxanne Perez. After the show, NXT announcer Booker T celebrated with Perez because he trained her to be a wrestler a few years ago.
On Wednesday morning, WWE fired Mandy Rose due to the explicit content she was posting on her FanTime that included nude photos and videos while charging fans a lot of money to see it. Since it is against company policy, WWE’s officials felt like they had no choice, but to fire Rose for it.
The firing ended Rose’s seven-year run in WWE that began as a Tough Enough contestant in 2015 and saw her return to NXT in 20201 to become of the most dominant champions in the history of the brand.
Booker T has been the main commentator on NXT since October and has also known Rose since she was on Tough Enough. The two-time Hall of Famer gave his thoughts on Rose’s release on his “Hall of Fame” podcast recently:
“It’s a bad situation, the company being put in a situation where they had to do something about it, Mandy Rose putting herself in a situation. ‘Put yourself in a situation,’ I say that all the time. That’s real. You put yourself in a situation and something happens. That’s exactly what happened here. I’ve been around Mandy Rose since the beginning, since Tough Enough. I watched her work so hard to win, she didn’t win, but she impressed me to the point where I was like, ‘Give her a contract, put her in the game.’”
As he continued, Booker praised Rose’s work in NXT while also comparing Rose to Trish Stratus, which has been a comparison many people have thought of regarding Rose for many years.
“Things didn’t work out on the main roster, she went back to NXT and has been banging for the past 413 days as champion and created one of the most awesome runs for a female that we’ve seen in decades. She put herself in a great position to be looked at as a major superstar like Trish Stratus. People are going to remember Trish forever from WWE and what she’s done in the ring. Trust me, Trish Stratus, now, is able to do all of that, OnlyFans or whatever else, and is going to be able to make more money from being a WWE Superstar for so many years.”
The former six-time World Champion (five in WCW, one in WWE) said that as Rose became a bigger star in WWE, the more money she could make for the rest of her life and that being on TV was so important.
“What I’m saying is, I hate it because that money was going to always be there for Mandy Rose. It was like money in the bank. She didn’t even need it right now. It was money in the bank for Mandy Rose. I could be wrong, maybe she does need it right now. I don’t know. What I’m saying is, the bigger her star would have risen in the WWE, the more money she would have been able to demand going forward in life. Out of sight, out of mind. Being on TV is so important to being relevant. These days, they say, ‘We don’t need TV, we can do our own thing,’ of course you can, but your star is not going to shine as bright.”