Axiom, Isla Dawn, Stephanie Vaquer Discuss WWE’s Netflix Debut

After three decades on terrestrial television, “Monday Night Raw,” WWE’s flagship weekly program, will debut on Netflix for subscribers worldwide today. This marks the beginning of a worldwide, 10-year, $5 billion partnership between the streamer and the brand, bringing with it all sorts of new opportunities for the fans, the brand and its superstars.

In the United States, the deal is limited to WWE’s weekly “Raw” programming, but most international territories will receive all three of the brand’s weekly shows — “Raw,” “SmackDown” and “NXT” — as well as the company’s Premium Live Events (PLE) and a range of supplementary and catalog content.

This means that audiences in many countries will have up-to-date access to all of WWE’s current offerings for the first time. For the company’s international talent, this is particularly important as their friends and families and hometown fans now have far greater access to their work.

Current NXT Tag Team Champion Axiom, a native of Madrid, is the first Spanish superstar to make a big impact in WWE. In 2024, as a team under the name Fraxiom, he and his British tag partner Nathan Frazier had an impressive (running) run as champions and were named by Sports Illustrated as the best tag team in the world across any promotion. Despite his success, Axiom’s presence in WWE is notable as professional wrestling remains niche in Spain and has been difficult to find on television.

However, this was not always the case. “Wrestling was very popular here in 2007-2008 when it came on TV for a while,” Axiom tells Black ahead of WWE’s Netflix debut. “I already knew a little about it from video games, action figures and video tapes, but when I first saw WrestleMania, I was really impressed. I had always loved superheroes and was a big fan of movies, and for me this was the perfect combination of those thing.”

For Axiom and other Spanish fans, the arrival and availability of WWE on television was exciting but short-lived. For several years now, the only way to access WWE programming in Spain – and many other countries around the world – has been through the company’s own streaming platform, the WWE Network. However, shows like “Raw,” “SmackDown” and “NXT” were often delayed by weeks.

In Scotland, WWE and local independent wrestling have thrived for decades, with the country producing main event professional wrestling talent such as frequent headliner and former world champion Drew McIntyre, former women’s tag team champion Piper Niven and the Unholy Union tag team of Isla Dawn and Alba Fyre who won the women’s tag team championship at the “Clash at the Castle” PLE in Glasgow last June and is part of a red-hot feud with the division’s other top teams.

Dawn recalls watching WWE programming as a child and the lengths her family would go to to access PLEs, which were pay-per-view at the time but will now be available on Netflix in Scotland.

“We didn’t have much when I was growing up, so we would save up for pay-per-views: my sisters, my uncle and a lot of other family members,” she recalls. “Then we would all watch together. But even then it was hard to keep up, which fans will be able to do now that they have to be on Netflix.”

NXT newcomer and one of 2024’s biggest free-agent signings, Stephanie Vaquer, says that when she was growing up in Chile, WWE was popular but often hard to find: “When I was young, WWE was on open TV for a while, but then it switched to cable. So when I was about 11 years old, I begged and begged to get cable so we could watch wrestling on TV. My dad used that as motivation and told me that we could get cable as long as I continued to do well in school and behave.

Now she is excited that her friends, family and fans of all ages throughout Chile will have much easier access to professional wrestling whenever and wherever they want to watch. “WWE is already popular in Chile, but I think people there are extremely excited and patiently waiting to watch WWE on Netflix. It will be more accessible than ever,” she says.

Dawn agrees: “Fans being able to watch it whenever they want and all the shows, including ‘Raw’, ‘SmackDown’ and ‘NXT’, which was unheard of in Scotland before,” she says, quoting up to nine -Time difference faced by European fans hoping to catch WWE’s weekly shows in the US

Back in Spain, Axiom sees the Netflix deal as a significant opportunity for WWE and professional wrestling to grow in profile, just as the global Spanish hit series “Money Heist” did when it was picked up by Netflix. The crime drama did decent but not great numbers on terrestrial TV in Spain before Netflix acquired it, marketed it as an original and turned it into a global phenomenon and one of its best-performing non-English-language shows of all time.

“That’s a fair comparison,” said the roofer. “When ‘Money Heist’ was on TV in Spain, I didn’t know much about it or watch it. But when it came on Netflix and was right there on the home screen, everyone took notice. I think that will happen in many countries with WWE.”

The WWE Netflix debut comes at a time of increasing diversification of the company’s on-screen product. Over the past two decades, the WWE roster has become increasingly international, with each new performer coming on board bringing something unique that helps develop the product and make it more appealing to a global audience.

“I feel like we have so many international stars across all three brands that everything has adapted to what we’ve brought with us,” says Dawn.

WWE’s live shows have also been held overseas more frequently over the past several years. In 2024, some of the highest-rated and best-received PLEs took place abroad – Backlash in Lyon, France; Elimination Chamber in Perth, Australia; and the aforementioned Clash at the Castle – and with the company trending in that direction, its international stars are excited at the prospect of performing in front of home audiences.

Starting in March, WWE will launch its Road to WrestleMania series of shows in Europe and host an episode of “SmackDown” in Barcelona, ​​where Spanish fans will surely hope that Axiom will appear. While nothing is planned in Chile yet, Vaquer says she hopes to make her hometown professional debut on the WWE roster.

“It would be a dream come true for me,” Vaquer says. “The first time I saw wrestling live was when WWE went to Chile in 2009, but despite being a pro for several years now, I’ve never wrestled professionally in Chile. I have fought all over the world, but never in my home country. So I would be so proud for my first time being a WWE Superstar.”

Dawn says that aside from the direct benefits of WWE being available in so many new territories, many of the company’s superstars are excited about other opportunities the Netflix deal could bring their way. “Obviously wrestling has a massive fan base, but it’s still kind of in its own world. But when it’s on Netflix, it can create whole new fans who turn on the TV or go to the website and want to watch something else. Many WWE stars are already making a huge impact in the entertainment industry, like John Cena and The Rock, and I think this will create more crossover opportunities as the WWE stars become more recognizable around the world. It’s a really exciting opportunity for everyone at WWE to become an even bigger part of the wider entertainment industry.”