Roxanne Perez spoiled the first title match of Giulia’s WWE career on Tuesday’s NXT premiere on The CW by beating the Japanese star to retain the NXT Women’s Championship.

Cora Jade played a pivotal role in the outcome. Midway through the match, she pulled Giulia out of the ring and delivered a DDT on the outside as the referee was distracted. Jade rolled Giulia back into the squared circle, which allowed Perez to hit Pop Rocks on the challenger and pick up the win.

Several months ago, multiple reports suggested that WWE had signed Giulia, but rather than immediately making the move to the United States, she left Stardom and helped Stardom founder Rossy Ogawa get his new Marigold women’s wrestling promotion off the ground.

That led to plenty of speculation regarding when Giulia would finally arrive in WWE, but the wait came to an end last month at the No Mercy premium live event following Perez’s successful title defense against Jaida Parker.

Giulia’s music hit and she made her first WWE entrance, concluding with her and Perez coming face to face, which was a harbinger of things to come.

On the following episode of NXT, Perez cut a promo in the main event segment only to get interrupted, but it was Chelsea Green who who made her way to the ring rather than Giulia.

The former multi-time Stardom champion and NJPW Strong women’s champion did in fact make her presence felt a couple of minutes later, though, confronting Green and laying her out with a knee.

After taking out Green, Giulia once again had a stare-down with Perez before saying, “Me, you, CW,” which suggested she wanted to challenge Roxanne for the NXT women’s title on the first episode of NXT on The CW.

One week later, Giulia had the first match of WWE career, which was a victory over Green, and her title match against Perez became official as well.

Giulia undoubtedly provided Perez with the toughest challenge of her reign, but Perez somewhat surprisingly escaped with her title reign intact, leaving Giulia to go back to the drawing board.

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