Giulia, Perez Rematch Sets the Tone for NXT in 2025

Giulia and Roxanne Perez.

The “Beautiful Madness” that is the “Dangerous Queen” vs. “The Prodigy.

Presently we’re a little more than two weeks away from Giulia’s rematch against Perez for the NXT women’s championship. Thinking back on a previous column I was reminded of what I wagered to be the likely path forward at the time of Perez’s defeat of Giulia. Last month I wrote this:

I don’t think there’s any timeline on when Perez drops her title, and frankly it serves her better to stay in NXT and season herself more than she already is than to go up now or in the next several months and find herself in the middle of dozens of pre-existing stories. She should stand on her own when the time comes. With that in mind, I think the trio of recent additions including Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer and Zaria will extend her time in NXT and give her fresh opponents and programs to work within.

With Giulia earning another title shot at Perez after winning the Iron Survivor challenge last weekend, Perez’s time in NXT feels like it’s winding down. Furthermore, where I questioned whom between Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer and Zaria would dethrone “The Prodigy,” the NXT brass could have easily chosen one of the other two to win the challenge. I feel like that makes the conclusion to Perez’s reign a little more solidified.

In two weeks time Giulia will likely be the new NXT women’s champion.

Previously I considered the end of Perez’s run from the perspective of the classic “loser leaves the territory” concept, which in her case would entail moving to the mainline WWE shows. Although I do believe we’re on the precipice of that happening more than I did a month ago, I would argue a Perez loss doesn’t mean she’s immediately main roster bound. Incidentally I also don’t think she has a lot of time left on the brand.

I don’t believe Giulia would have won the Iron Survivor match if she wasn’t going to come out on top in the rematch. Even if it wasn’t a clean victory, the first loss makes sense in that moment and didn’t hurt Giulia’s starpower. That decision solidified Perez as a world beater in taking out a former champion in Japan. However, a second loss within the short time since their first encounter does more to harm Giulia’s credibility as a championship contender than it does not. It also does little for Perez as a character and champion. It would simply be V9 for her.

Let’s take this a step further and presume Giulia is imminently bound for the main roster. Does doing so with lessened buzz after two higher profile losses make sense? No. Consider this though. Let’s say Giulia trounces Perez. In that scenario you can conversely angle toward a rubber match as opposed to Giulia winning and having them go their separate ways, and have that trilogy match in the springtime be Perez’s final NXT sendoff. This way you’ve accomplished the following with Giulia’s arrival:

• With the hype behind her, you’ve cemented Perez as a legit champion given that Giulia’s credibility among the “in-the-know” fans is established and they know she deserves the immediate title shot. And for those not in that camp, even if it wasn’t her best it showed her off opposite the perennial champion and set her up very early as a person to watch while keeping Perez strong.
• Giulia winning the Iron Survivor is her earning her opportunity, and having her do so over five other deserving challengers cements that value in the perception of her on the program. Having her continue to work toward dethroning Perez despite her loss, and then overcoming the odds inherent to the match’s design is a positive. It was in my opinion inarguably the right move because it’s more impactful than the other options.
• With Giulia going over, you’ve created the opportunity for a defining NXT women’s title trilogy that closes out Perez’s time and sets up Giulia as the new Final Boss of the division. And with Perez moving on post-trilogy, then you can have Giulia as the champion opposite all of these other fresh faces who she can then trade the belt around with in a series of epic clashes. It keeps the division fresh, and most importantly if it’s Perez’s time to thrive on a major show then there’s little sense in fighting that reality.

Looking at the calendar the next NXT PLE after New Year’s Evil in 2024 was Roadblock. That event was held in March. If that trend was to hold in 2025, we would see the two continue to feud over two months.  I think that’s a good potential timeframe to conclude their feud. There are definitely other things Perez could do in NXT to close out her time, such as one last match with Cora Jade, but I think it’s best to move her along if the time is right and the trajectory makes sense. I think this is a different conversation if anyone else had won the Iron Survivor, but Giulia winning narrows the options and scenarios to the logical endpoint of beginning Giulia’s reign off Perez’s equity and then closing out the feud with a blowoff trilogy match.

Prior to Giulia signing there were some reports stating that should she come over to WWE from Stardom and more directly Marigold, she would be treated with the same credibility and positioned as a threat similarly to Asuka when she first debuted in NXT. While it’s doubtful in the current landscape that we would see a record-breaking reign, I still think the division is in a good place with the new faces and up-and-comers in NXT. I think if you leave Jade behind with her feet in the two title divisions, alongside Zaria, Vaquer and Giulia running the main event scene, then Perez is free to move along to the next phase of her career.

“Love, Love, Love” Giulia

I’ve been a fan of Giulia for a few years now, and I think given time the people who are new to her will understand why. Even more so as they learn about her background.

The reason I gravitated to her is her backstory. She’s a half-Japanese, half-Italian person born in London, U.K., and because I’m also half-Italian I was like, “I need to go support my people.” More concretely than that, because she and her brother grew up in Japan and were mixed race, they were subjected to xenophobia. I read a story about her and her brother in school that detailed how they were bullied constantly. You can look up all of the excerpts from the interview from a few years back, some of which are pretty heartbreaking.

The one that stuck out to me was one where she and her brother were bullied specifically in the schoolyard. There was a girl who was bullying her brother, and as stupid as this sounds, wouldn’t let him use the jungle gym. So Giulia stepped up and got into a fight with her, standing up for herself and her brother. People can be dicks, and it takes character to do something like that. So she’s a good egg.

Before I deep-dived Stardom, Giulia was the one I really started seeing people talk about during her Wonder of Stardom reign (an IC title equivalent). The first time I saw her wrestle was in 2020 during a NJPW showcase of the Stardom wrestlers that included Giulia and Hana Kimura who were feuding at the time (and whom Giulia has paid tribute to repeatedly since her tragic passing).

Over the next year or so I saw her twice in 2021, once during a Wrestle Kingdom dark match and at a NJPW mid-pandemic show. Both times she teamed with her friend and partner Syuri who she held the Goddess of Stardom tag team titles with (and who if you have never seen, get on YouTube now). They went by the name ALK (Alto Livello Kabaliwan), which translated means “high level madness.” It pretty much summed up their energetic entrances. Then I started watching her more, and by the time I really got into Stardom and subscribed she had already been through the early beginnings of her rivalry with the villainous Tam Nakano, had a fantastic match with current IWGP women’s champion Mayu Iwatani, and had just wrestled Syuri for the World of Stardom championship in a losing effort in early 2022.

The consistency in her matches though was that they were high impact, had some ground-based attacks, had a healthy dose of high-risk work, and altogether as a package really reminded me of Akira Hokuto (the other, original Dangerous Queen, who’s probably my favourite women’s wrestler of all time). Some of her best work was with Syuri, who she later won the World of Stardom title from in late 2022 after winning Stardom’s equivalent to the G1-Climax in NJPW. That match, and others with people like Suzu Suzuki (who I would be shocked if we don’t see in NXT at some point), were highly physical, emotional matches that are among my favourites alongside all of the Nakano and Iwatani matches.

I’ll have been a full fan of hers for about four years by the time New Year’s Evil comes around. In that time I’ve seen everything in her Stardom back catalogue. While the last two paragraphs preceding this one are nice and speak to her impact and success, one thing I noticed from watching every one of her Stardom matches was that at the beginning she was booed and jeered coming in as an outsider from the Ice Ribbon promotion.

Coming in alone, she helped form Donna Del Mondo (translated as “Women of the World”) alongside Syuri and others like Maika. Over time they won many titles, adding a number of members, with the three of them specifically all holding the Red Belt to highlight their impact. What’s interesting with Giulia is that over time, despite coming in as an outsider she won the fanbase over because she worked hard, got better and outright busted her ass to earn Stardom fans’ respect. This was true such that unlike those initial reactions, she was cheered following her sendoff matches in Stardom, and again as she left Marigold immediately prior to her WWE debut.

Farther up I mentioned the notion of the rematch being earned. This is why. Giulia’s had to work for every millimetre and then inch of her success. Nothing has been given to her at any point in her life; she’s had to fight for respect, stand up when she needed to and worked hard even when the payoff seemed out of reach. Especially among a domestic and international fan base that looked to Stardom for the higher speed, crisper pedigree of someone like Iwatani or Io Shirai.

She is not the archetype of a female Japanese wrestler, but she earned the accolades and respect all the same simply by working for it. That’s worth respecting, and I hope that the more the North American crowd learns about her that there are plenty of reasons to “love, love, love” Giulia beyond her kind of being a cool badass. Successes are great, but earning them in the face of adversity is something to admire.