Shawn Michaels Says The NXT Women’s Division Depth ‘Just Naturally Happened,’ Talks Main Roster Call-Ups

NXT is praised for the strength and the depth of its’ women’s division, and Shawn Michaels says that it was a trait that just naturally came out of their looking for young talent. The women’s roster is often considered the highlight of the show with talent like Jacy Jayne, Jordynne Grace, Tatum Paxley and more delivering great work each week.

Michaels, the head of WWE NXT, spoke about the matter in an interview with the San Antonio Express News. Michaels talked about the division’s evolution as well as the process for main roster call-ups. You can see highlights below:

On the NXT Women’s Division:

“Well, one it honestly wasn’t a focus, to be perfectly honest. It was just something — and again, that’s what I think we’re so proud of is. The reality is, we didn’t try to have the best women’s roster and the deepest deepest women’s roster in all of wrestling. It is just something that kind of just naturally happened. As we began in NXT and WWE to to reach out to all of these D1 athletes — I don’t know. It was just something that over time, you could just see how quickly that some of the young ladies were adapting to this and understanding it and quite honestly becoming very good very quickly.

“And I think as you see the success of people like Tiffany Stratton, who came in and was a part of of NXT, and then how successful she’s been on the main roster. I think that encouraged a lot of our young ladies. Obviously they’re hungry, they’re passionate, they’re extremely competitive as well. And look, NXT has just been a huge beneficiary of this women’s division just being so strong. But I can honestly say it wasn’t something we set out to do. It is just something that the women have kind of taken over and controlled for the last year and a half. But I will tell you this, it has certainly inspired uh the men’s side of our division. So now there’s an incredibly healthy competition going on in NXT to see who can have the strongest division coming up in in 2026.”

On the Decision To Call Someone to the Main Roster:

“Well again, obviously, as we’ve talked about numerous times. NXT really is the only wrestling brand out there that whose job really it is to do everything they can to get talent over, but then lose them. Not have the ability to create stars and then have them help you — to be able to monetize that in a rating standpoint, and in a financial standpoint. Our job is to is to feed the main roster, Raw and Smackdown. That is the the juggernaut of the WWE. Our main brands, Raw and Smackdown. So NXT’s role again is like the NCAA. It’s honestly to get um our athletes as ready and as clean and as and as polished as we can before going up to the main roster.”

“And all that list of people. That list of superstars that you mentioned are all people who I think anybody could argue are kind of main roster ready, as they say. And that’s just proof of how successful NXT has been just in the past, as you see the Raw and Smackdown rosters with 95% of the people coming from NXT. You can see it’s going to continue to be filled with NXT people in the future. Because um it’s just producing like gangbusters right now.”