TNA Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace appeared on WWE NXT this past Tuesday. It was a shocking appearance because absolutely no one outside of the NXT crew knew she was coming. It is even said that Shawn Michaels, NXT showrunner (booker), even kept her appearance secret from the rest of the talent backstage. While that might just be the rumor, one thing isn’t. WWE fans were most certainly surprised by the appearance.
In fact, even notable professional wrestling news sites did not know she was coming much less knew she was there that night. WWE did a great job at keeping that secret underwraps. Michaels said on Wednesday in an interview that getting Jordynne Grace was a big deal for him. He was jealous that Hunter (Triple H) got to work with her for the 2024 Women’s Royal Rumble. He even told Trips that he “owed him one” essentially.
That in part seems to have led to the inclusion of Grace in NXT. On top of that, Shawn referenced how fans are hardly ever surprised these days. He wanted for things like that to happen again. The Heartbreak Kid most certainly surprised the fans, that’s for sure. For what it’s worth, Roxanne Perez was genuinely surprised when Jordynne Grace came out on Tuesday too, according to Fightful. That means HBK kept this very quiet.
Still though, getting Jordynne Grace was going to be a bit difficult. After all, she is still under contract to TNA Wrestling and holds the TNA Knockouts Championship. This meant that a deal had to be worked out with both TNA and Grace herself.
JORDYNNE GRACE IS MAKING A TON ON THIS DEAL
A deal was reached with Jordynne Grace where she’d make three appearances for WWE. She has an upcoming match with Stevie Turner on NXT next week. From there, she will challenge Roxanne Perez for the WWE NXT Women’s Championship at the NXT Battleground PLE next weekend.
Most feel that the three appearances included the Royal Rumble appearance. This means that WWE could have very well reached this three-appearance deal as far back as January. Others feel that the Rumble appearance was a one-off, which is crucial here. If the latter is true, Grace would have a future third appearance with WWE that could happen at any time.
WWE is paying Grace a ton for her work too. The deal for her three appearances is somewhere in the six-figure range. Let’s just examine this for a second, shall we? For example, six figures would be anything from 100,000 to 999,999. We’ll say that Grace is making the low end of $100,000. She will have made that in just three appearances. Very few working on NXT currently make that in a given year of work for the brand.
This is understandable though, given that most are developmental talent. Those that become bigger will get paid more. Of course, those with a bigger name upon being signed might see that six-figure salary. However, no one is making that for just three matches.
HOW TNA HAS WORKED OUT APPEARANCES:
Anthem Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of TNA Wrestling, had to allow Grace to do this. However, Grace and any other TNA wrestler can take bookings with other companies already. On top of that, Anthem allows them to keep any intellectual property they come up with there. For a while, Anthem took a percentage of the money the contracted talent made from a booking. This forced wrestlers to increase their asking price, which became kind of a problem.
WWE would likely have worked around the issue. Since Scott D’Amore no longer works there, they now have to deal with one of the major heads of the entire Anthem company. The structure switched up a lot when they ignorantly fired D’Amore. This means WWE now has a connection with the bigwigs, and that likely made working out a deal a lot easier. Overall, it is very likely that WWE paid Anthem a good bit of money and then paid Jordynne Grace for her services on top of that.
Plus, they are paying her what they believe her value would be as a WWE Superstar. That is a pretty big deal if you ask us. Plus, she recently released a new shirt to commemorate her work in NXT too. That’ll likely generate some nice money for her during this run too.
WWE WANTS TO SIGN JORDYNNE GRACE BADLY
If you have not guessed yet, WWE is a huge fan of Jordynne Grace. WWE Officials notably fell in love with her at the Royal Rumble PLE. Of course, William Regal and Triple H already knew of her work before this. The others had not, and she even exceeded the expectations of Regal and Trips too. This is why they are willing to work out a deal with TNA just to get her in for a few appearances. Heck, they are overpaying for the right to use her, which shows how much value they see in her.
This means WWE likely wants to sign her pretty badly. The problem is that Grace is going to be under contract with TNA for a while longer.
Fightful reported as of August 2023 that Jordynne re-signed with the company for two years. That even came with a pay increase and a schedule that allowed her to continue competing in bodybuilding competitions. This means Grace won’t be available as a free agent until the Fall of 2025, so a little more than a year from now.
WWE President Nick Khan has stated that he wants to work with other promotions. Something that Triple H has long been in favor of, pre-dating WWE selling off to Endeavor. Triple H had worked out deals with several English promotions such as Progress Wrestling, Irish Whip Wrestling, Over the Top Wrestling, and many more during their build of WWE NXT UK. They have since tried to work out deals with various promotions all over the world.
FUTURE TNA PARTNERSHIP:
TNA has been one of the few that has openly been in support of working with them for years. TNA has some incredible workers on the roster, so it would make sense to work out a deal with Anthem to use several others beyond Jordynne Grace. Plus, one might have to consider that WWE would be open to having some of their wrestlers appear on TNA programming.
Drew McIntyre had an exchange with TNA World Champion Moose on Twitter/X after the Jordynne Grace appearance on NXT. Drew pretty much referenced how he’d love to win the TNA World Title again as his tweet said: “The door is open both ways.”
Moose is currently on his second reign with the World Title there and could use new challengers. Due to how big Drew has become since his return to WWE, going to work a match in TNA would be big for their ratings. On top of that, some believe that AJ Styles could very well head back to the house that he once built too. SmackDown GM Nick Aldis refused to let AJ challenge again for the WWE World Championship without working his way back.
Styles could easily go to TNA to challenge for the World Title, which would be big. Considering we’re now seeing “TNA” back as the upfront name of the company for the first time in many years…it’s now technically back to being what it was.
TNA has been open to working with a lot of companies, including AEW. If they work out a deal with WWE though, AEW will likely not be willing to work with TNA again for a while out of spite. This is something they’d need to consider.