It was confirmed by Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative, Shawn Michaels, that Stephanie Vaquer has signed with WWE. The company went on to make the announcement that Vaquer would be appearing at their forthcoming house shows in Mexico.
Vaquer made her in-ring debut on 7/13 and scored a victory over Women’s Tag Team Champion Isla Dawn.
Prior to Vaquer’s arrival to WWE, she was with CMLL and relinquished the company’s World Women’s and World Women’s Tag Team Titles.
From the videos online she got a huge reaction in front of a crazy crowd for a house show. WWE has had some really fun international PLE’s the past two years. It looks like they really need to do one in Mexico.
Has NXT ever gotten a high profile female free agent? Jade went straight to the main roster. The rest of NXT’s women’s division have been mostly developed at the PC.
Non-compete clauses. Another “terrible and predatory” WWE practice that turns out to just be smart business (which doesn’t necessarily make it NOT terrible and predatory).
Non-compete could be one way to go. Or actually sign the talent you are going to use. I admit I don’t know all the details of the Vaquer situation. But it certainly seemed like she already had a deal signed with WWE before she even went on AEW tv.
If AEW was confident enough to feature her for a PPV match they should have tried to sign her to multiple weeks of follow up TV. And if she couldn’t commit to that then that is a red flag that she was already signed elsewhere. And then AEW could have used someone else instead.
Wasn’t she working under her CMLL deal when she worked Forbidden Door? The release request happened after, unless I’m getting things mixed up. I see the issue with Dragon Lee. They didn’t sign him and WWE scooped him up. But yeah, I thought Stephanie was under her CMLL deal.
If she wasn’t, then the story is they want to make sure everyone is under a deal somewhere before doing the show. Also, Sean Ross Sapp was pissed that this story got editorialized like crazy.