Roxanne Perez has nothing but good things to say about Mandy Rose

While it was reportedly always going to happen at some point in the next couple months, WWE made the call to have Roxanne Perez end Mandy Rose’s long NXT Women’s title reign on Dec. 13.

The company fired Rose the next day, starting a discussion about contractor rights vs. maintaining a brand’s image (and even thornier topics) that’s still going almost two weeks later. It means that though signs currently point to this being only the first of many accolades the 21 year old Perez will win during her WWE career, her first title will always be linked to Mandy and her release.

It’s why the current champ was asked about the former one during a recent interview with BT Sport:

“Mandy is so amazing. She honestly is one of the best and sweetest humans I’ve ever met. Since the moment I stepped into NXT, it’s nerve-wracking to be surrounded by people that you’ve been inspired by and one of my first few matches was against her for the NXT Women’s championship. She’s always been so sweet to me, she’s always given me the best advice. Before and after the match, she gave me a big hug and we were both crying together. It was cool because she was really happy that she was able to pass it down to me. I’ve gotten so close to her within the last few months. No matter what, she’s going to be amazing, she’s going to do amazing things.”

BT Sport is a WWE partner and therefore a friendly media outlet (though not quite as friendly as Roxanne’s other big interview this week, with Corey Graves & Kevin Patrick on the WWE-produced After The Bell podcast, where Mandy barely even came up). So she’s not exactly fielding “gotcha” questions.

But still, this is a very gracious answer that gives us another example of why everyone in wrestling thinks the sky is the limit for young Ms. Perez.