The WWE NXT Women’s Division has been one of the best presentations of women’s wrestling the last few years. Under Shawn Michaels’ leadership, the brand has developed a slew of young names for the future, while being a quick stopping ground for more well-known talent as they move to the main roster. Tatum Paxley is the latest one to find herself sitting atop the division and it has been a slow rise through the ranks that is befitting of what NXT is meant to achieve.
At NXT Halloween Havoc 2025, Tatum Paxley defeated Jacy Jayne to become the NXT Women’s Champion. In doing so, she captured the first championship in what has been her young professional career. With three years of experience under her belt, Paxley knows nothing but the WWE system. A system that where it is easy to get lost in the shuffle as talented athletes move throughout the brands and younger performers join the company on what seems to be a quarterly basis. Yet, Paxley persevered and reached this critical point.
According to Cagematch, Tatum Paxley has a total of 150 matches in her career, the first of which occurred on WWE NXT Level Up back on February 15, 2022. Looking back through those matches, it is easy to see her career arc. Paxley started as an enhancement talent, but continued to get an increasing number of reps. She’d go from that quirky background character, to being someone that fans and media personalities were keeping an eye on.
She consistently lost match after match until 2024 when things started to change. The brief title feud against Jordynne Grace for the TNA Knockouts Title was the first glimpse into how far WWE leadership thought Paxley could go. That’s when she started picking up momentum leading into another program with Lyra Valkyria, a name many believe will be a top champion on the main roster. Paxley didn’t fall behind, and her performance in that angle kept her within reach of the two women’s titles on NXT.
Paxley is a testament to building a performer up from the bottom, to becoming a champion. WWE, and often times wrestling as a whole, doesn’t do the greatest job of moving a new face up the card. Paxley’s build has done just that. She’s slowly moved up the roster on NXT and now she’s standing at the top with the NXT Women’s Championship. It has been an enjoyable ride for her fans, and it will be interesting to see how far this run takes her.