Wednesday, December 14, 2022

From champion to the unemployment line in less than 24 hours: Mandy Rose cut by WWE

 There is a scene near the end of Barry Levinson's 1987 adaptation of "Good Morning, Vietnam" in which General Taylor (Noble Willingham) informs Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams) that his friendship with a native Vietnamese revealed to be a VC (Viet Cong) would put the Army at risk, so Cronauer is being discharged. His nemesis, Sgt.-Major Dickerson (J. T. Walsh) isn't safe, as he's transferred to Guam because of his petty, vindictive actions against Cronauer.

This stands out 35 years later because of what we are learning from WWE.

NXT women's champion Mandy Rose (Andrea Saccomanno) was set to defend her title vs. Roxanne Perez, the winner of the women's Iron Survivor Challenge at Deadline, on January 10 in a special "New Year's Evil" episode of NXT's weekly program. An angle at the beginning of last night's broadcast accelerated the timetable, and by the time the show signed off just at 10:05 (ET), Perez had defeated Rose to win the title.

Less than 24 hours later, Rose was released by WWE after some content from her FanTime site had been leaked on Twitter by some fans.


You see, word quickly got around that Rose was selling nude pictures of herself on FanTime. With recent reports that she was engaged to former WWE & AEW wrestler Tino Sabbatelli, one would assume, depending on when she started this venture, that she might've been trying to raise money for the wedding. Another way of looking at it would be that she was living out the gimmick as a self-absorbed, self-serving heel champion as the leader of Toxic Attraction, which was the women's answer to the Bloodline on the main roster in that they dominated NXT's women's division, and never getting punished for blatant rules violations.

I used the "Good Morning, Vietnam" analogy because the feeling is that Shawn Michaels (Michael Hickenbottom), who has been in charge of NXT for over a year, was being accused of protecting Toxic Attraction, based on the old television adage that "sex sells". Rose, in this writer's opinion, should've lost the title months ago, but Michaels, and maybe USA Network suits for all we know, didn't see any reason to have Rose do so. Until last night.

So what's next for Andrea Saccomanno? Aside from a wedding, no one really knows, and in the final analysis, she only has herself to blame for her situation being where it is, 11 days before Christmas.

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