As we’ve noted, ESPN recently spoke to all five of the women recently called up from NXT to the WWE’s main roster to get their reactions to the news. Two of those women included Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, who were moved to RAW and paired up with Paige to form the new Absolution faction.
Rose and Deville revealed how they found out they’d be moved to RAW, and discussed their reaction to realizing they’d been called up together. Here are the highlights:
Finding out they’d been called-up to RAW:
Deville:
“As the days unfolded, you hear rumors and you hear things flying around. You don’t wanna believe anything until it’s set in stone, because it’s the entertainment industry at the end of the day and things change. Come Monday, around 3:00, 3:30, I found out what I was doing. I think I’m still in disbelief. I don’t know if it’s really set in yet.”
Rose:
“I actually wasn’t in Houston for NXT, I was home in Orlando. I was ready to actually go home a little early for Thanksgiving, since we didn’t have any Florida shows. But I received the email that I’d be going to Raw and SmackDown, which was really exciting news, but I had to change all of the travel stuff. Was this going to be me just kind of showing my face, or just maybe… I really didn’t know what to think. I thought about all different scenarios.”
Getting called-up together:
Deville:
“I think one of the best parts about this entire journey is that me and Mandy got to share it together. We started together about two and a half years ago on Tough Enough, on the reality show where some odd thousand number of people tried out and me and Mandy were just two of those thousands applying for an opportunity to change our lives, never thinking it would come to this… We’ve tagged together in NXT, we fought each other in NXT — it’s just been this crazy roller coaster ride that I’ve gotten to take with my best friend. It’s the best possible scenario I could ever ask for.”
Rose:
“We hit it off from day one. I don’t know if it was because we were both from the Northeast, but we automatically became best friends. We were there for each other, and we’ve been there for each other ever since. We live together. We do everything together. We drive to shows and train together. Finding out that we were both debuting the same night, and moving to Raw together, it was just insane.”
You can check out the full interview with ESPN by clicking here.
