With the WWE Draft rapidly approaching, stars from RAW, SmackDown, and even NXT have begun to look at the landscape of the promotion they cash checks from in order to predict where they will land moving forward.
With Paul “Triple H” Levesque already announcing that Roman Reigns will have his titles merged on whatever brand he lands, and a new WWE World Heavyweight Championship set to be christened at Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia, it would appear that The Fed is looking to further harden the boundaries of their brands moving forward, with the prospects of performers going from one promotion to the other seemingly reserved for cross-brand champions like the WWE Women's Tag Team Champions.
On paper, this is a very exciting time to be a WWE Superstar, but just because the draft presents the proposition for new storytelling opportunities and an elevated spot on the card doesn't mean everyone is excited by the opportunity. No, Tiffany Stratton, the NXT standout who is scheduled to wrestle Indi Hartwell and Roxanne Perez for the NXT Women's World Championship at Spring Breakin', would actually prefer to stay in developmental, as she feels her in-ring skills could use a bit more polishing before she goes all-in on the main roster.
“I definitely think, for my career, I would like to stay in NXT a little longer and hone in on my wrestling skills before getting called up,” Stratton told Busted Open Radio via Fightful. “If I do get the call-up, I’m ready, and I will make the most of it and rise to the occasion, and I’ll be ready.”
Stratton also discussed her relationship with the rest of the NXT locker room and admitted that, while she does have friends she understands that she might not be the most popular person in the room.
“I’m a very upfront, blunt person,” Stratton noted. “I don’t take people’s crap. I’m very out there. I feel people are going to have a problem with me no matter what. I’m a pretty girl, I’m athletic, but I have my close friends and people I can lean on that I trust. People are going to have a problem with me, I feel, no matter what. It is what it is.”
Eventually, Stratton is going to be a very good heel on the WWE main roster whether she's on RAW or SmackDown; she has the look, she has the moves, and she can even command the mic in a grating, dare-I-say Miz-y way. However, based on the fact that every NXT commercial is seemingly dedicated to Stratton, it feels far more likely that she'll leave Spring Breakin' with the title and have a prolific run with the strap in developmental, with Hartwell or even Perez far more likely call-up candidates.
Tiffany Stratton describes what she can improve before jumping to WWE.
Elsewhere in her interview on Busted Open Radio, Stratton discussed what she thinks she can improve at in the ring. While Stratton can clearly deliver offense, as her moonsault finisher is one of the more impressive moves utilized in NXT on the regular, one of the areas the 23-year-old would like to improve on is her selling and ability to telling a compelling story via top-notched in-ring psychology.
“I think I have every single component that it takes to become a superstar,” Stratton said via Fightful. “I think I lack in the ring. In the ring, I think I lack with my selling and psychology. That's where I need to improve, and quickly. Definitely, in ring is where I need to improve with my selling and psychology, those are the number one factors.”
Stratton was then asked about who she turned to at the performance center for advice and shouted out a pair of former in-ring stars who have helped to usher her along.
“Shawn Michaels is definitely one that I try and go to a lot and ask for advice,” Stratton said. “He is the one that is telling me, ‘your selling needs to be better.' Then, Fit Finlay, he has been helping me a lot lately. I go to him for questions as well, he's been helping me a lot.”
You know, for being so young and so relatively new to professional wrestling, with just 37 matches to her credit as a pro per Cagematch, it's pretty impressive that Stratton is looking to fill out her in-ring abilities and make herself a “complete” Superstar before she goes under the microscope of the main roster. If she's this focused on getting filling out her skillset now, the sky really is the limit on her potential.
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