After moving to WWE NXT in July of 2021, Mandy Rose quickly became dominant on the brand, defeating Raquel Rodriguez the following October to capture the NXT Women’s Championship.
Mandy Rose held the championship for an astounding 413 days before losing the NXT Women’s Title to Roxanne Perez on December 12th, 2022. Fans were in for a shock as she was released from the company the very next day. According to numerous reports, her release stems from the fact that WWE was unhappy with the nature of content she was sharing on her personal subscription service.
It was later reported that WWE felt they had no choice other than to let her go. WWE were aware that her subscription existed, but became concerned about the nature of the increasingly racy content that the star was sharing. Those within WWE felt that the star had gone “way, way over the line.”
The star is facing no financial distress after her exit, however, as it was revealed that her exclusive content offerings earned Mandy Rose over $1 million dollars in the month of December.
Shawn Michaels Has Nothing But Praise For Mandy Rose
Speaking on a media call ahead of NXT Vengeance Day, Shawn Michaels opened up about the circumstances of Mandy Rose’s release, saying that he didn’t personally fire her as he doesn’t have that authority. Moreover, he had nothing but praise for the star and said that he would have loved to work with her further.
“Obviously, not the ideal situation. I will say, if I’m allowed to say it for the record, I didn’t fire her. I can’t fire anybody. Only thing correct about any of that is that I handle creative. It was unfortunate. I think Mandy was fantastic for us. I absolutely enjoyed working with her. She was a phenomenal champion. We would have loved things to have gone different and been able to build our story with Roxanne, but I was put in a position to where I had to make a call creatively, and so we did that.
Continuing, Shawn Michaels explained that Roxanne Perez was always planned to win the NXT Women’s Championship, but plans had to be altered for her to win sooner than expected.
“It’s one of the things that I’ve learned, doing this job, nothing comes before the brand. We have to put those things forward and that’s what we did. Roxanne was certainly where we were going regardless, we just went a few weeks earlier than we expected to.
“The great thing is, now we’re right back on course and I will say, honestly, I think the world of Mandy Rose, she was nothing but phenomenal with us, we’ll miss her, but we’re thrilled about Roxanne Perez being the NXT Women’s Champion and taking us into the future.”
h/t Fightful