Shawn Michaels Says Mandy Rose Firing Was ‘Not the Ideal Situation’, Thinks The Brand Has To Come First

Fightful reports that during a media call for WWE NXT Vengeance Day, Shawn Michaels gave his thoughts on the firing of Mandy Rose back in December, which he said was not an ‘ideal situation.’ He also praised Rose but noted that the brand had to come first.

He said: “Obviously, not the ideal situation. I will say, if I’m allowed to say it for the record, I didn’t fire her. I can’t fire anybody. Only thing correct about any of that is that I handle creative. It was unfortunate. I think Mandy was fantastic for us. I absolutely enjoyed working with her. She was a phenomenal champion. We would have loved things to have gone different and been able to build our story with Roxanne, but I was put in a position to where I had to make a call creatively, and so we did that. It’s one of the things that I’ve learned, doing this job, nothing comes before the brand. We have to put those things forward and that’s what we did. Roxanne was certainly where we were going regardless, we just went a few weeks earlier than we expected to. The great thing is, now we’re right back on course and I will say, honestly, I think the world of Mandy Rose, she was nothing but phenomenal with us, we’ll miss her, but we’re thrilled about Roxanne Perez being the NXT Women’s Champion and taking us into the future.”