Natalya says nobody sent her to NXT. She asked Shawn Michaels to put her in with Jaida Parker and compared Parker to Jacob Fatu.
Speaking on Busted Open, she addressed the assumption that a main roster wrestler working on the developmental brand must have been assigned there.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, not a single soul asked me to come to NXT. It wasn’t like, oh, she’s being asked to go down there because she’s trying to take someone’s spot.”
The request was hers, and it was specific.
“I said to Shawn, I want to work with Jaida because I see something in her. It’s so special. She’s got this dog in her that I’m like, I’ve got to test the Nattie character out against her.”
The comparison she reached for is one nobody has made about a woman on the roster.
“I feel like, and I’ve said this before, I feel like she’s the female, kind of Jacob Fatu.”
“She’s just got this edge about her that’s very different from the other girls. And that’s not me saying anything negative about any of the other girls, because I loved the match I had with Kendal Grey, I loved the match I had with Thea Hail, and I loved the work I’ve done in NXT.”
She put Parker alongside two of the most physically credible women on the WWE roster.
“But I see something so different in Jaida that I have not seen in a woman in, I think of dog, I think of Rhea Ripley. I think of Liv Morgan. I think of the toughest, baddest a** women in the industry, and I see that in Jaida.”
The two meet at NXT Heatwave on Sunday in a submission match, which Natalya challenged Parker to during an in-ring segment on the August 25 NXT. Natalya said Parker was wasting her potential. Parker answered that she was not wasting anything and did not need Natalya’s approval, then accepted, saying she would high-key wax her at the show.
They are level at one win each. Natalya won the first, on the June 16 NXT, forcing a submission. Parker won the rematch on July 21 by referee stoppage. The story started before either match. Parker came into the Dungeon, the training facility Natalya runs with her husband, Tyson Kidd, and attacked her there, which forced Robert Stone to make the first match.
“She came to the Dungeon, and of course she has no respect. This is somebody who thinks she can do whatever she wants. Sometimes people don’t like to look at themselves in the mirror and face who they really are,” she said in June. “If Jaida can’t flourish alongside me, she won’t be able to flourish at all in this business.”
Natalya has spent recent months pushing for Total Divas to return, saying she and the Bella Twins have never stopped fighting for it and that Khan is willing to listen without being committed to it.
Parker signed with WWE in 2021 and has been one of the more prominent members of the NXT women’s division. Fatu, the comparison Natalya drew, is on the WWE main roster and was part of the Bloodline story through 2025 and this year.
The rest of the Heatwave card is Tony D’Angelo defending the NXT Championship against Grayson Waller, Cruz Montana and Zilla Fatu, Kendal Grey defending the Women’s Championship against Kelani Jordan, Myles Borne defending the North American Championship against Jackson Drake, Borne and Tavion Heights defending the tag titles against Brad Baylor and Ricky Smokes, and a triple threat between Zaria, Wren Sinclair and Kali Armstrong to unify the NXT Women’s North American and WWE Women’s Speed Championships. Armstrong was added to that match after beating Zaria on Tuesday.
Heatwave airs live on Sunday, August 30 at 3 pm Eastern on the CW Network and the ESPN App in the United States, and on Netflix internationally.
