Mandy Rose Had “Inclination” Something Was Wrong Before NXT Title Loss

Mandy Rose has discussed the point she realized something was up before losing the NXT Women’s Championship, as well as feeling sorry for her opponent’s “rushed” title win.

Having held the NXT Women’s Championship for 413 days, Mandy Rose dramatically lost the title to Roxanne Perez on 13th December 2022 and was released by WWE just 24 hours later. It came to light afterwards that the company had not been happy with the direction she had taken with her personal fan site and seemingly felt they had to let her go.

In a discussion with Renee Paquette on her The Sessions podcast, Mandy Rose has revealed she was told by Shawn Michaels that her match with Perez had been brought forward, and how this didn’t sit right straight away.

I went into work like a normal Tuesday for TV. I was told that the title match that was supposed to happen down the line, at Vengeance Day was when it was supposed to maybe happen, but that was all up in the air. That’s the only news I got as far as the future. It was said that we were going to actually do the match tonight. It was around like, two o’clock or something when I was told.

Right away, I had the inclination that something was up because everyone has treated me so great at NXT. I had a great relationship with Shawn Michaels, the writers, the producers, everyone. So I was never kept out of the loop either, you know, being a champion for 413 days. I was in the loop with everything. I didn’t really have many surprises like that. So it was very like, wait, did I do something? What’s going on?

Obviously, I had some inclination because of what was going on on social media and what was going on the night before. It came from Shawn Michaels himself, so obviously I knew it was coming from the head of creative in that sense so I knew that I didn’t really have to go and try to seek other answers even though I wanted other answers. But at that moment, I had to do my job and get planning our match and everything else that we had to do that night.

Continuing on, Mandy Rose talked about how she felt sorry for Roxanne Perez, as there was less build and hype around the match than there should have been.

I felt bad for Roxanne because she’s so amazing and I really do love her as a person. I feel like it is so exciting anytime you’re getting told you’re gonna win the title. It’s very exciting, but I just felt bad because I felt like it was rushed. It was rushed. There was no promotion leading up to it. She had just won the match being the number one contender, so we were going to build on that eventually, and it would be a really good feud in that sense.

But I felt bad because it was just thrown on her. Her family would come to the shows. Her sister I’ve met and stuff. So she could have had her family there. So it was just really rushed and I just felt bad. But she handled it like a great professional woman that she is and we just got it done. Obviously, she was very happy and we had a great match.

Mandy Rose also recently discussed how she felt she could have worked at WWE whilst also persuing other ventures.

With thanks to WrestlingNews.Co for the transcription.