Nia Jax recently sat down with Yahoo News to discuss her transition to pro-wrestling and how her body confidence played an important role in her success. She revealed that while she did grow up around wrestling, she never really considered it a career option.
“When I first thought about getting into wrestling I was definitely skeptical,” Jax remembers. “Not to knock the women, but they were skinny — they were beautiful! I felt like I couldn’t wrestle because I didn’t look like any of those girls.”
It was a trip to WrestleMania 28 in Atlanta that changed her mind. Sitting front row alongside The Rock’s mother, Jax remembers the conversation she had with the mother of wrestling’s biggest movie star.
“I was sitting front row with my aunt, and I turned to her and said, ‘I feel like this is something I could do, but I’d have to lose a lot of weight, right?’ My aunt said, ‘No! Are you kidding me! You are exactly what this company needs. They need to be able to see a woman who looks like you, who is athletic and beautiful and has curves, and goes in there and shows how powerful and strong you are.’”
It was then that Jax pursued a WWE tryout but she had a stern warning for her more famous cousin.
“I specifically asked him, ‘Please make sure that nobody knows we’re related,’” she remembers. “I wanted to go in and have a fair shot.”
What she didn’t realize was that she was exactly what WWE was looking for to help boost their Women’s Revolution and after only the first day of tryouts, the coaches revealed that Jax was their top pick.
I was like, Are you kidding me!?” Jax remembers. “I didn’t realize that me being so different and me having the confidence in myself shined through to them, [enough] for them to be like, Look, we need somebody like you.”
