WWE Superstar Opens Up About Missing 2023 Draft and Growing Into Her “Prodigy” Persona
WWE Superstar Roxanne Perez opened up about her journey to the main roster during a recent interview on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, addressing her historic SmackDown debut, missing out on a call-up last year, and how her mindset has shifted since.
Perez made history as one of the youngest competitors to ever wrestle on SmackDown. “I think someone said that I was the first person to be younger than SmackDown to wrestle on SmackDown,” she said. “I feel so weird telling people, ‘Yeah, I grew up watching you,’ because then I make them feel bad because they’re like, ‘You’re calling me old?’ I’m like, no, no, no.”
Despite strong expectations, Perez was not drafted to the main roster in 2024, but she used that moment as motivation. “Last year, obviously, I wanted to get called up in the draft so bad. Part of me thought it would happen, and it didn’t,” Perez recalled. “I could have let it just make me really upset and just kind of not fully give up, but just make me not as driven. But I feel like it made me even more driven, because I was like, I’m gonna work on my promos. I’m gonna become the best heel that I could ever be. Because people thought that I couldn’t be a heel, and a year later, I was called up.”
Reflecting on that time, Perez now believes the delay was a blessing. “I thought I was ready as a babyface. But now that I think of it, I feel like I wasn’t as ready as I was when they called me,” she admitted. “I feel like I could have been ready at any point. I could have gone and just executed what they wanted me to execute. But I wasn’t at my full potential, my full character, the Prodigy character, and it was different being the Prodigy as a babyface. Calling yourself the Prodigy when you’re like a good guy, then calling yourself a prodigy when you’re a bad guy is more fun. You got to tell people, ‘I’m super young and I’m really good. What are you gonna do about it?’”
Perez is now establishing herself as a key part of the RAW roster, showing that the extra year of development gave her the tools to thrive on WWE’s biggest stage.
You can check out the entire interview with WWE Superstar Roxanne Perez on Insight with Chris Van Vliet below.
(h/t Alex Hunt and Chris Van Vliet for the transcriptions/quotes.)
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