The TNA Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace shocked the wrestling world on Tuesday when she showed up at NXT. She showed up to challenge the NXT Women’s Champion Roxanne Perez at Battleground on June 9 for the NXT gold.
Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful sat down with Grace in an exclusive interview to talk more about what led up to this. First, she was happy the surprise never was leaked.
“I’m relieved that I got to do the surprise. That’s awesome. Surprises in wrestling, I feel like it made it bigger. When no one expects it. I feel good. I feel excited. This is a huge thing for the wrestling world.”
Grace adds that this has been in the works for a few months, and even Perez herself didn’t know.
“They’ve been talking for, I want to say, a couple of months. They were just trying to figure out the right timing. Maybe three weeks ago, they had talked about wanting to use me. Then it snowballed from there. I didn’t know that I was doing the NXT appearances at first. Originally, they had asked if I would be available for Battleground. ‘Oh, that’s cool,’ then it snowballed to, ‘We want to re-introduce her.’ So, I ended up doing the NXT appearances. WWE is very different from TNA in that they book travel last minute. I didn’t hear anything until Sunday night. The travel lady messaged me, ‘We need you for NXT.’ I didn’t want to bother anyone, but I didn’t think it was happening anymore.”
“They were going to bring her (Roxanne) back five minutes before the segment happened to see who it was. She was kind of frustrated, and I think she was almost being petty about it. ‘You know what, I don’t want to know now. I’m going to find out when everyone else finds out.’ She just decided to not see me.”
Grace arrived just 30 minutes before the segment started.
“That was crazy. That’s not something, in a positive light, you would hear WWE fans chanting in a million years. They were so good about keeping it a secret. They had the doctors come to my hotel room to do my physical and blood work. They had me come late, like 8:30, maybe 30 minutes before the segment. They had a parking spot reserved and someone came out and ushered me to the back. They didn’t even have me go down the hall. It was just the first door to the left as soon as you come in. They had a ‘reserved’ sign.”
Per Fightful Select, she admitted she’s facing a lot of pressure of carrying the possibility of a WWE-TNA relationship on her shoulders. She said that her biggest fear is falling short of expectations, and is working out in her head how she should approach the match and how she should perform. She said that if she falls on her face she recognizes it could be “cataclysmic.”
