Roxanne Perez Discusses The Importance Of Her Winning The ROH Women's Championship

It's been a whirlwind couple of months for "NXT" star Roxanne Perez. On an episode of "SmackDown" back in October, she made her WWE main roster debut at just 20 years old. Then, at "NXT Deadline," she claimed victory in the first-ever Women's Iron Survivor Challenge, leading to her putting an end to Mandy Rose's 413-day reign as champion to become "NXT" Women's Champion herself just days later. 

Then again, "whirlwind" is a pretty accurate descriptor of her career thus far. After all, she'd only just signed with WWE earlier this year after already making the rounds through Impact Wrestling, GCW, MLW, and Ring of Honor — the latter where she became the inaugural ROH Women's World Champion at only 19 years old. On "After the Bell with Corey Graves," Perez elaborated on why that ROH title reign ultimately made everything feel possible.

"When I was 10 years old, I said, 'Alright, I'm going to be in the WWE one day, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but it's going to happen,'" she stated. She then started training at the age of 14, with her mind dead set on one day receiving a call from Stamford. That meant making a name for herself on the independent circuit and all the while hoping for the best. Then, her moment in ROH came knocking.

"I think winning the Ring of Honor Championship, that was so surreal," Perez continued. "It made me realize that all of my dreams could truly be possible. My biggest goal was becoming a WWE champion, but, becoming the first-ever Ring of Honor Champion at 19 years old, it just clicked. It lit a bigger fire in me to just keep going."