Paige, who returned to WWE NXT last night as Kelani Jordan’s mystery opponent, has revealed that she was a last-minute addition and wasn’t even the first choice.
On Busted Open Radio, Paige said Triple H asked her to do it during Monday’s Raw and SmackDown tapings at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
“So I got told last minute because it wasn’t actually supposed to be me,” she said. “Triple H pulled me aside when we were in Brooklyn because we were doing the double taping out there. He said, ‘Do you mind going down to NXT?’ I was like, ‘Oh sh*t. Okay, yeah, definitely. I could definitely do that.’”
Paige admitted that the short notice may have played a role in the result.
“It didn’t give me much time to prepare,” she said. “Maybe if I prepared a little bit more, I would’ve won. But hey, it is what it is. I know what to do next time if I get a little bit of time.”
From the conversation with Triple H in Brooklyn to the match at the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, Paige had only two days to prepare to challenge for the NXT Women’s Championship.
Last week, a backstage interaction between Jordan and IYO SKY teased that SKY would be the challenger.
Jordan, who defeated Wren Sinclair at Halloween Havoc on Saturday, was told by Robert Stone that she would defend the title against a mystery opponent. Paige got a big pop, but Jordan reversed the Ram-Paige into a roll-up for the pin to retain the title. This was Jordan’s third successful title defense since winning the belt at NXT Heatwave on August 30.
It was also Paige’s first NXT match since 2014. She became the first-ever NXT Women’s Champion in 2013 and never lost the title. It was vacated after she was called up to the main roster, where she became Divas Champion in her debut.