WWE veteran Nia Jax spoke with Chris Van Vliet on the latest installment of his “INSIGHT” podcast.
The following are some of the highlights.
On how she benefitted from the two-year absence she had after being released from WWE in 2021: “I feel like I changed in a better way. Like, I got better and I elevated my game a little bit more. Not that I didn’t think I had the opportunity in my first part, but I think because it was a different schedule and, I wasn’t really, like, locked in as I could have been. When I had the break and I was able to see what I could improve on, I was able to change it coming back.”
On how she used to have to make WWE her entire life in the past, but now she won’t let it be the focal point: “Some of the girls that I came up with, we all kind of made WWE our whole lives. Like, morning, noon, and night, storylines, talking about it all the time and worried about our bookings. Back in the day, if you got hurt, you were forgotten about. It was hard to get back in the rhythm, so we pushed through things. Like, ‘I’m not hurt, I’m fine, I’m going to stay and I want to skip on all my friends’ weddings and baby showers.’ And then coming back, it felt different to where it’s like, no, WWE is my passion and I love it and I want to be a part of it, but it’s not going to be my entire life. I’m not going to make it like the focal point.”
On changes in WWE from the Vince McMahon Era compared to the Triple H Era: “I was taught a certain way, like, ‘You’re a certain size, you can’t do these things. Stay away from this. Don’t let them do this to you.’ So I was kind of pigeonholed into a little bit of …and I was afraid to get out of it because, you know, the person telling me is somebody who runs the show and you work for an audience of one. And so this time around, Hunter was more like, ‘Be you. Be you, do you, show them what you can do.’ Because he’s like, ‘I know what you’re capable of.’ So I feel like the difference is just me kind of being myself a little bit more. I’m more adding who I am into my character instead of, like, I’ve got to stay here and make sure that, you know, somebody’s happy.”
