Saturday night (Oct. 3) at Reality of Wrestling’s Rise to Wrestling Royalty show in the Galveston suburb of Texas City, two wrestlers signed contracts with WWE’s Independent Development or ID program.
Designed as a way to recruit indie talent into its developmental system, WWE ID gives wrestlers the opportunity to train at the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida in exchange for some level of control over their bookings. Some members of the program appear on WWE television, wrestling on Evolve with
the goal of moving on to NXT and a full-time developmental contract. Others have exited not long after signing.
WWE ID also recruits wrestling schools into the program, one of which is Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling. ROW was already a good way to reach WWE — ask Roxanne(!) Perez. It’s become even more of a pipeline since the launch of the indie development program, and this past weekend sent two more into the ID portal.
As you can see, “Lady Bird” Monica Monroe earned her contract by winning the Women’s ID title. She did so by beating Laynie Luck at Rise to Wrestling Royalty. Luck had held it for more than 300-days. Monroe has been wrestling since 2021, and in addition to ROW has appeared in OVW, NWA, and as an enhancement talent for AEW/Ring of Honor.
Josiah Jean was offered his deal by WWE Hall of Famer Booker T himself. Jean’s been training at ROW for three years, and has appeared for ROH in his career.
Will they be future Raw or SmackDown stars? We’d love for that to be the case. Let us know what you think of their prospects, or the WWE ID program, in the comments below.
