Roxanne Perez is living the dream in WWE.
Perez, formerly known as Rok-C, had a breakout year in 2021 when she became the ROH Women's World Champion by winning the tournament for the title. ROH subsequently went on hiatus, and Rok-C competed for MLW and IMPACT Wrestling before WWE officially signed her in March. The company renamed her Roxanne Perez, and she debuted in April.
In an interview with Denise Salcedo, Perez looked back on the beginning of her journey with NXT and made it clear that it's been a surreal ride. She stated that working with Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom was been very cool, and she also enjoys working with some of the wrestlers she knew from her time on the independent scene.
“I feel like it’s so surreal, honestly. 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," Perez said.
Perez has already become one of NXT's featured stars, as she won the Women's Breakout Tournament and the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship. Jade subsequently turned on her, and now the two women are engaged in a heated rivalry, and they're set to collide at NXT Heatwave. When asked about the opportunities she has received, Perez emphasized she's thankful and she described how it all seems crazy because getting to WWE in the first place was a dream come true.
"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," she said.
Perez's match with Jade is part of the special "Heatwave" episode of NXT 2.0 on August 16. Check out the lineup here.
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