When news broke that Jade Cargill had signed with WWE after exclusively spending her professional wrestling as a member of AEW up to that point, it felt like a massive deal.

Sure, Cargill's time in AEW could best be described as unique, as she won 50 straight matches and was booked like an unstoppable force, but seldom shook it up with the top female performers in the promotion, with exactly zero matches against the likes of Britt Baker, Saraya, or Hikaru Shida outside of an appearance in the Casino Battle Royale back in 2021. If given a chance to work WWE's less demanding style of match, who knows, maybe fans would be looking at the next Bianca Belair, Becky Lynch, or even Charlotte Flair.

And then… nothing, at least until the 2024 Royal Rumble.

That's right, after making a few promotional appearances without working a match immediately following her signing, Cargil went into a minor hibernation from the spotlight before bursting back to life in a major way at the 2024 Royal Rumble, where she entered the match at spot 27 and quickly announced her presence to the professional wrestling world by eliminating Nia Jax from the match, a move made all the more impressive when you consider it took 11 performers to accomplish the feat the year prior.

Brawling with the likes of Becky Lynch, Bianca Belair, Bayley, and eventually Liv Morgan, the woman who eliminated her as the field shrunk from three to two, Michael Cole, Corey Graves, and Pat McAfee boldly declared that Cargill was “That Chick,” a more PG tweak of her AEW catchphrase, all the crowd cheered her on like a legitimate main eventer, as opposed to a brand new Superstar with no other experience in a WWE ring.

So, what does the future hold for Cargill? Well, she now has beef with Jax and Lynch, both of whom she eliminated, and probably with Morgan too, which ended her night a few moments before the match came to an end, but in the end, that comes secondary to the what the Royal Rumble really proved: Cargill belongs in WWE and her arrow is pointed sky high.

Jade Cargill explained why she chose to jump to WWE.

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Last September, when Jade Cargill signed with WWE, she had an interview with ESPN where she discussed why she jumped from AEW and what she expects moving forward. While Cargill has been respectful of Tony Khan in the past, in the end, she made it pretty clear that WWE is where she wants to be, as they have all of the machinery in place to make her into a megastar.

“The leadership. Paul [Paul Levesque aka Triple H], Bruce [Bruce Prichard], Nick [Nick Khan], you can’t get any better than that. I’m the first signing under the TKO umbrella,” Jade Cargill told ESPN via 411 Mania. “Where else can you go to get the best quality training? Nowhere else. The PC [WWE Performance Center] here is one of one. There is nothing else like it. The machine is behind you. The platform, the overall history, the legacy, I’m creating a household name. I could go on and on. Why not? The question more so is why not?”

Asked if the potential to crossover to other media ventures had anything to do with her decision to leave AEW, Cargill said yes as well, noting that she wants to be a star not just in the squared circle but in Hollywood, too.

“Yes, it did. I know that I have that it factor. Call it cocky, call it conceited, call it vain. Just because I know myself, I don’t think that makes me this evil person. There is nothing wrong with knowing yourself and knowing what you bring to the table. I’m sorry that I’m just so blessed with good looks and I work hard. I go hard in the gym and I go hard in the ring. I can’t help that. I want to take these tools, I’m not going to take them for granted, and I’m going to work hard. That was one of the factors that had me led over to this way, yes.”

Welp, while Cargill won't earn any awards for her modesty, it already looks like her strategy has paid off in a pretty definitive way, as she earned a bigger pop at Tropicana Field than she did at any point during her AEW career and trended on social media in a major way thanks to her incredible presentation at the Rumble. Though her journey to international superstardom is still early, she took one heck of a first step in the right direction.