Other than in rare occasions NXT has been at its best when it’s used as a vehicle to build toward the future. It’s been an avenue for young grapplers and new signees to familiarize with WWE’s interpretation of professional wrestling and how it should be presented to the viewing audience.
With the women’s division in the recent past, it’s been used very well as both a waystation for wrestlers coming down from the main roster to either simply stay active or help build the future with established stars like Becky Lynch putting over new talent.
Looking at the last several champions, there’s a trend you start to see in the sequence of reigns and their lengths since April 2018:
- Shayna Baszler (132 days)
- Kairi Sane (71 days)
- Shayna Baszler (416 days)
- Rhea Ripley (108 days)
- Charlotte Flair (63 days)
- Io Shirai (304 days)
- Raquel Gonzalez (201 days)
- Mandy Rose (413 days)
- Roxanne Perez (108 days)
- Indi Hartwell (31 days)
- Tiffany Stratton (107 days)
- Becky Lynch (42 days)
- Lyra Valkyria (164 days)
- Roxanne Perez (223+ days)
The one thing you’ll notice straight away is that outside of Perez, every one of the women on the list is either on the main roster, or in Lynch, Rose and Hartwell’s case inactive and/or out of the company. Many of the recent champions have been built and have moved up to either Raw or Smackdown, leaving behind younger mainstays like Perez, Cora Jade, Fallon Henley, Gigi Dolin, Kelani Jordan, Lola Vice and Sol Ruca to hold the fort for the division. Perez essentially being a phenom before even hitting the WWE landscape, and still only aged 23, is the focal point as she should be, but herself still has room to grow before joining past NXT champions on the main roster.
The issue with the list of the current roster (pre-recent signings) is none of them are ready to necessarily take Perez’s role as champion, nor do I think she should be leaving any time soon if that group are the only set of options. That group is varying degrees of ready, but I’d argue only a few are anywhere near where they’d need to be to be tasked with dethroning Perez. With that said, slow builds pay off the best in the long term and none of them should be hotshot into her spot when it isn’t the correct time.
Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer and Zaria
I don’t think there’s any timeline on when Perez drops her title, and frankly it serves her better to stay in NXT and season herself more than she already is than to go up now or in the next several months and find herself in the middle of dozens of pre-existing stories. She should stand on her own when the time comes. With that in mind, I think the trio of recent additions including Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer and Zaria will extend her time in NXT and give her fresh opponents and programs to work within. More importantly than that, I would argue the styles each of them have (although I’m less familiar with Zaria) are something Perez has not really been exposed to, even despite already having one match with Giulia and having worked Vaquer in multi-person settings. Giulia’s hard-hitting style of Japanese wrestling that calls back to one of my favourites in Akira Hokuto, and Vaquer’s more fluid style of Lucha gives Perez new looks and styles to learn from that will only serve her well in the future.
I think one of the three probably dethrones her, and as I said I don’t think there’s a timeline on Perez leaving the brand. However putting them against Perez one after another dually introduces each woman to the NXT and wider-reaching WWE base considering they might not have followed them in Stardom, CMLL and the Australian indie scene. That will only serve them well too as all three are surely destined for the main roster before too long in their own right and these feuds put them opposite Perez who is a mainstay on the program and has her own notoriety.
That give and take dynamic is how you effectively build forward.
For example, considering Perez’s own development, while she could head up to the main shows now, it serves her more to stay put and continue to improve. It would have been very easy to strap up Giulia at Halloween Havoc given her wrestling pedigree in Japan and the hype surrounding her arrival stemming back as far her Stardom contract ending in March, that would have been a justified decision to make. But that isn’t what happened, and in hindsight it was the right move.
Starting with Giulia and Perez, then using that match to introduce Vaquer and Jade (back) into the mix, and then using that to showcase Zaria in her debuting moment allowed NXT to expand its main event program beyond Perez and “other.” Now the division revolves around Perez, Jade as backup and general “frenemy”, and three legitimate title challengers you can build programs around deep into 2025.
No matter whom between the three new arrivals in NXT dethrones Perez, it gives the audience time to know them over the course of the next several months and lets Perez bloom even more with three of the best female wrestlers working today. That benefits the immediate future of NXT and WWE as a whole going forward, especially once the day comes that all four end up on Raw or Smackdown if they decide to continue the continuity of their interactions together in NXT.
In the meantime, doing little things like having Perez narrowly beat Giulia with Jade’s help, or having Vaquer pin her serves to erode her confidence which almost become maniacally deluded even if it was always backed up by success. In that regard, that’s also going to build her character in addition to refining her wrestling, leaving her primed for Raw and Smackdown when the time is right. And then subsequently NXT will be well off with Giulia and Vaquer picking up “their history” outside WWE, you’ll have Zaria running roughshod over mostly everyone, and by that point the entire NXT women’s division mid-card should be in a better position than they are right now.
Each block builds off the next, and so suddenly you have three new people debuting at the same time who are on equal footing, have equal TV time and are being given time for the WWE audience to get to known them organically. You have a champion who’s ever developing and improving and now has new threats alongside a friend who would double cross her in a heartbeat. Arguably, most importantly you give the undercard more time to develop and get ready for their time up against Perez and the international juggernauts that are Zaria, Giulia and Stephanie Vaquer.