The professional wrestler made her debut in 2022 and quickly rose the ranks in the NXT show.
Dwayne Johnson recently added one more feather to his cap when he was admitted into the board of directors at the TKO Group Holdings, the company that manages the WWE and UFC. Johnson moved from being one of the top wrestlers in the WWE to the one with a seat at the table making decisions. He also received full trademark ownership for the name ‘The Rock’.
However, good news for the Johnson family kept pouring in as his daughter Ava Raine got promoted to general manager of NXT. Raine created history when she was named the youngest GM in NXT history. Raine is just twenty-two years old. While Dwayne Johnson was basking in his glory, his young daughter was not far behind.
Ava Raine Became The Youngest NXT GM In History
Ava Raine and William Regal/WWE
Professional wrestler Ava Raine recently became the youngest general manager in NXT history at just twenty-two years old. She was given the promotion by William Regal, who returned to NXT after a stint at the All Elite Wrestling company for over a year. Regal spoke to Ava Raine on the show, giving her advice on how to navigate this position in the company.
The show saw Ava Raine coming out of a boardroom meeting after receiving the promotion to GM for NXT. She was immediately followed by William Regal whose appearance was met with cheers from the audiences. After Raine thanked Regal for sitting in on the meeting, Regal gave her some advice,
“I need you to look after this brand for me. I was here from day one in NXT, and it means the world to me. It’s a thankless job, long hours, egos to juggle, lots of split second, and sometimes very tough decisions to make. But I know you can do it.”
Regal then congratulated her on being the youngest general manager on NXT and assured her that she could handle the role well. Ava Raine thanked him for the advice and acknowledged that she had big shoes to fill. William Regal, who returned to WWE after a year, assured Raine that he was just a call away in case she ever needed any help.
The news of Raine’s promotion came on the same day that her father Dwayne Johnson was promoted to the board of directors of WWE’s parent company, TKO Group Holdings. In his statement, Johnson said,
“I’m very humbled to have a seat at the table that has decades of history and family legacy for me. A table that my family helped to build. Being on the TKO Board of Directors, and taking full ownership of my name, ‘The Rock’, is not only unprecedented but incredibly inspiring as my crazy life is coming full circle.”
Johnson has been in the WWE since the early ‘90s and has given his all to the company as a professional wrestler. He was also a third-generation wrestler from his family.
Dwayne Johnson’s Daughter Made Her WWE Debut Very Early
Ava Raine/WWE
Many fans were not happy with Ava Raine’s promotion as the GM of NXT. While she was the youngest GM in history, she had only joined the federation in 2020, when she began her professional career. After finishing school in 2019, Raine reportedly wanted to pursue her college studies at NYU before a knee injury squashed her plans.
Raine then decided to pursue a professional wrestling career and began training with the WWE Performance Center in 2020. After two years of training, she made her debut in 2022 on NXT as part of wrestler Joe Gacy’s team Schism. She then moved on to the role of Shawn Michaels’ assistant and then recently became the GM of the show.
Born Simone Johnson, Ava Raine revealed in an interview with Fightful that she was inspired to take up professional wrestling by her grandmother i.e. Dwayne Johnson’s mother. She said,
“I used to sleepover at her house on weekends and I hadn’t really watched wrestling at all until my dad returned in 2011, and then my grandma sat me down and said, ‘Okay, we should start watching wrestling.’ My grandma has cases and cases of wrestling DVDs and I would go through them all the time and watch them for hours. That was what made me fall in love with wrestling and I was like, ‘I want to do this one day.’”
Raine was also the first fourth-generational wrestler after Dwayne Johnson, and his father Rocky Johnson. She was also one of the youngest members of the WWE training program, which she joined at the age of nineteen.
