Mandy Rose Recalls Dropping NXT Women’s Title To Roxanne Perez, Her Final Day With NXT

On a recent edition of The Sessions, former NXT Women’s Champion Mandy Rose talked about the strange events that led to her loss of the title and next-day firing. Read on for highlights:

On how surprised she was by the turn of events: “Completely surprised with everything. I went to work, like a normal Tuesday for TVs. I was told that the title match that was supposed to happen down the line, at [NXT] Vengeance Day, it was said that we were actually gonna do the match tonight. It was around like 2 o’clock or something when I was told. Right away, I had a good inclination that something was up.”

On normally being kept in the loop on her booking: “Everyone treated me so great at NXT. I had a great relationship with Shawn Michaels, the writers, the producers, everyone. I was never kept out of the loop, being a champion for 413 days. I was in the loop with everything. I didn’t have many surprises like that. So it was very like… whoa, did I do something, what’s going on? Obviously I had some inclination because of what was going on social media, and what was going on the night before.”

On who delivered the news of the title change: “It came from Shawn Michaels himself, so obviously, I knew it was coming from head of creative in that sense. I didn’t have to go and seek other answers, even though I wanted other answers. At that moment, I had to do my job and get planning our match and everything else that we had to do that night.”

On how rushed the title change was: “I felt bad for Roxanne because she’s so amazing, and I really do love her as a person. I feel like it was so exciting, anytime you’re told you’re going to win the title, but I felt bad because I felt like it was rushed, there was no promotion leading up to it, she had just won the match being the #1 contender. We were going to build on that eventually. It would be a really good feud. I felt bad because it was just thrown on her. I know that her family would come to shows; she could have had her family there. But she handled it like a great professional woman that she is. We just got it done, and she was very happy, and we had a great match.”

On anticipating something bad happening: “The next day, which I was anticipating with how everything went down. I was making jokes about it, actually, the night before. I was literally making jokes about it and the girls were like, oh my god, stop, you’re crazy. I’m like, no. It’s not crazy. I got a call, I don’t know, around 11 or something. You know that 203 [Connecticut] number… when it comes in, it’s gonna be either really good or really bad.”

Mandy on being at Indi Hartwell’s house when the call came: “I got that call, they said what they said. They had to release me because of the situation, but I didn’t really get much info, so that was kind of it. I was actually staying at Indi Hartwell’s house. She was upstairs getting ready for TV — I haven’t told anyone this story actually — she was upstairs getting ready because we had to do a double taping that day. I was like ‘Indi! I just got fired!’ She’s like, all the way upstairs: ‘What? Shut the fuck up! No way!'”

On her immediate reaction: “At first, you kind of like laugh a little bit. You don’t know whether you want to laugh or you want to cry. It was like I got punched, and I was like okay. I really need to think about this, handle this.”

If using any of the above quotations, please credit The Sessions h/t 411mania for the transcription.