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To call Roxane Perez's time in professional wrestling charmed might just be an understatement. Since officially embracing her pursuit of a wrestling career full-time after she graduated from high school, Perez wrestled all over the country, signed not one but two full-time contracts with two of the biggest wrestling companies in the world, and ultimately secured six separate championship runs to her credit, including the inaugural ROH Women's World Championship.
That's right, despite still not being old enough to drink alcohol – Perez doesn't turn 21 until November – and having wrestled just 141 matches, Perez has had more success in the squared circle than the vast majority of the female performers in professional wrestling history, and is in line to make an even bigger slash moving forward, as she's already had an NXT Tag Team Championship run in just over four months of active NXT 2.0 television time.
Fun fact: Perez is the first and only person in NXT history to hold the NXT Tag Team Championship by herself after Cora Jade threw her belt in the trash and relinquished her half of the title. Even if it only lasted a week, that is very cool.
So what's next for Perez in the squared circle? Does she have big plans for the future, or is she just happy to be in the company she has dreamed of joining since she started training at 13? If her conversation with Denise Salcedo of The Wrestling Observer is of any indication, it would appear Perez's whirlwind journey isn't dissipating any time soon.
Roxanne Perez is loving her run in WWE/NXT so far.
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When Denise Salcedo asked Roxanne Perez what it was like to be a member of the WWE Universe while the duo were both backstage at the WWE WrestleMania 39 launch party, the woman formerly known as Rok-C was quick to point out just how much of a whirlwind her recent run has been. “I feel like it’s so surreal, honestly,” Perez told Salcedo. “I still have moments almost every day, I’m like driving to the PC, and I’m like, ‘Wait, I’m a WWE Superstar. This is crazy.' But yeah, I still feel like a little kid every single day that I go to work. I feel like everything has been happening so fast, but I feel like everything happens the way it’s meant to happen. It’s so cool getting to work with Shawn Michaels. Literally, the first time that I met him, I was like a little kid. I was like, ‘Oh my god, don’t cry, don’t cry.' But yeah, it’s so cool. He’s awesome, he’s helped me so much, and Matt Bloom, he’s like our head coach there, and he’s been so awesome. Just like the environment there and all the girls that I get to work with. I get to work some of the girls that I knew from the indies like Indi Hartwell, Cora Jade, so yeah, it’s really cool.”
A quick trip over to Cagematch backs up Perez's claims that she did, in fact, perform on the same shows – and in matches with – many of her current NXT counterparts like Hartwell and Jade, and even Quinn McKay, who now serves as the ring announcer for NXT Level Up! under the name Kelly Kincaid.
Certainly, this must all feel like a lot for Perez, right? To go from a high schooler to a professional wrestling champion when many of her peers are still working through their gen eds in college? For Perez, it's all part of the process, and she is beyond thankful for everything that has come her way, as you can read via a transcription from Fightful.
“It’s crazy, it’s surreal because I’m only 20, so I have done a lot in my wrestling career, but it’s so surreal to me because I would have never thought that, when I was younger, I always knew like okay, I’m gonna be a WWE Superstar. There was no ifs, ands or buts about it. I was like I don’t how I’m gonna do it, but I’m gonna do it. But I never thought that I would be friggin’ NXT Women’s Tag Team Champion within like four months. Honestly, I don’t know, it just feels like my love for WWE and this business, it just makes the little 10-year-old me so so happy and proud because I just never would have thought that all of this would be happening so, so fast, but I’m thankful.”
While some may think of Perez as a gimmick, or they feel jealous of just how quickly she was able to accomplish so much in such a short period of time, it's hard to read that back and not see someone who has worked hard and is now reaping the fruits of their labor. Good for you Rok-C.
