WWE Reportedly Signs Four Female Athletes to Developmental Deals as Performance Center Welcomes New Prospects
WWE is continuing to invest in the future of its women's division, reportedly signing four new female athletes to developmental contracts at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida.
According to reports published October 23, Gabriela Martinez Asensi, Silvia Likki, Elly Finch, and Tayleigh Robertson have signed with WWE and relocated to Orlando within the past week.
And what's particularly interesting about this group is the variety of athletic backgrounds they're bringing into professional wrestling.
Gabriela Martinez Asensi, originally from Spain, previously played collegiate tennis at the University of Missouri. She's also a fitness coach with a substantial social media following and speaks Spanish, English, and German.
Silvia Likki comes from Italy with a background in CrossFit and fitness. She has also established a significant online following, reportedly exceeding 200,000 Instagram followers.
Elly Finch, a former Michigan State University track and field athlete, competed in shot put and previously made history as the first female varsity football player at Royal Oak High School in Michigan. Finch reportedly participated in two WWE tryouts this year, in January and August, before securing her developmental deal.
Tayleigh Robertson brings perhaps the most directly transferable background of the four, having competed in amateur wrestling and bodybuilding while attending Snow College and Utah Tech.
All four reportedly participated in WWE tryouts before receiving contracts.
And while athletic credentials certainly provide an advantage, there's something I've always believed about making the transition into professional wrestling.
Being an exceptional athlete doesn't automatically make someone an exceptional professional wrestler.
I've shared locker rooms with performers from all kinds of backgrounds, and one of the most interesting things about this business is discovering who genuinely understands it.
Strength matters. Conditioning matters. Coordination and discipline absolutely matter.
But so do timing, psychology, character development, and the ability to connect with an audience.
You can teach someone how to execute a maneuver. Teaching them how to make an audience care about that maneuver is an entirely different challenge.
And that's where the Performance Center becomes particularly important.
Each of these women arrives with an established athletic foundation, but they'll now have the opportunity to discover what kind of professional wrestlers they want to become.
Not every successful female wrestler needs to fit the same mold.
In fact, I would argue that the strongest women's divisions are built around performers with distinctly different identities, personalities, and strengths.
A collegiate wrestler shouldn't automatically be expected to present herself like a fitness influencer. And a CrossFit athlete shouldn't feel obligated to adopt a character that doesn't suit her personality.
The key is discovering what makes each performer believable.
For Martinez Asensi, Likki, Finch, and Robertson, the physical foundation is already there.
Now comes the considerably more complicated part: learning how to turn athletic ability into professional wrestling.
WWE has not yet announced television debut dates for the four prospects.
But with NXT and EVOLVE providing developmental platforms, the company has several potential avenues for introducing its newest recruits.
And I'll be interested to see which of these women discovers her identity first.
Because getting signed isn't the be-all-end-all accomplishment that people think it is. Getting signed is actually somewhat easy.
Becoming somebody the audience remembers while consistently maintaining relevance and appeal with the talent to reinvent yourself? That's where the real work begins...
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