Entertainment
10 Facts About Alexa Bliss, You Cannot Ignore
Alexa Bliss is one of the biggest names in WWE. She has risen through the ranks to become a champion, winning titles under Raw and NXL. She started life in Ohio, born to wrestling fan parents who passed on their love of the sport to their daughter. Alexa has always been a keen sportswoman. At school, she enjoyed track sports, kickboxing and gymnastics and later became a cheerleader and bodybuilder. Alexa has not always been the confident vixen that is seen on screen. She suffered from eating disorders in her teens and was hours from death due to the illness at one point. She managed to turn her life around with a combination of healthy eating and rigorous exercise to become the honed, slim athlete she is today.
10. She’s a champion wrestler
Beautiful wrestler Alexa Bliss, made her WWE debut in 2013. She joined the Raw team and rose to champion ladies’ wrestler. She was the first woman to become the Smackdown Woman’s Champion twice and when she became the Raw Women’s Champion in 2017, she became the first woman to hold both titles. She has risen quickly through the ranks of wrestling to reach the top of her game. Despite her diminutive stature, she has proven that she is a match for the best in the sport.
She performed under the NXT brand before entering as a competitor for Raw in 2017. More accolades came to Alexa in 2018 when she won the Elimination Chamber title and then the Money in the Bank Ladder title later the same year. When she won her third Raw Women’s Champion title she had five championship titles to her name. She has defeated some of the biggest names in the wrestling world, including Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch and Nia Jax and her endurance and physical prowess is evident when looking at the huge number of wrestling matches she has competed in under the various WWE brands.
9. She’s a brilliant singer
Alexa has music in her blood and comes from a family that has excelled in the field of music. Her grandfather was a country music singer and Alexa and her family would often watch him perform in their home state of Ohio. Alexa’s parents have released footage of their young daughter singing at home and her voice shows she has inherited her family talent.
The public has heard Alexa’s voice on her WWE promo, and her talent is clear to hear. Although she has never had any professional singing lessons, Alexa has been able to perform at several country music events in her home state of Ohio. She was deeply influenced by the country music scene, along with her whole family. She remains a fan of music to this day and uses it to motivate her while working out. She enjoys Aerosmith and the Darkness to listen to while she is training. We may see more from Alexa as a singer as her career develops, her online biogs refer to her as a wrestler, model, and singer, and with a voice like hers, she is unlikely to be silent for long.
8. She was a champion gymnast and body builder
After relapsing from her eating disorder in college, Alexa took her recovery in a new direction and focused on turning around her body image. This led her into the field of bodybuilding. She worked with personal trainers to hone her body and focus on a healthy lifestyle. She embarked on weight training and this gave her the strength to enter the Arnold Classic competition, according to Sportskeeda. She became the first female to get a pro card as a bodybuilder.
As a youngster, Alexa was also into active pursuits. She excelled at gymnastics which she started at the age of five and also enjoyed kickboxing and cheerleading according to Heightline. The kickboxing helped her with some of the wrestling moves and attitudes and also gave her more integrity among her peers. It also provided her with self-defence skills, which was one of her intentions when taking up the sport. These pursuits have no doubt stood her in great stead for her wrestling and bodybuilding. Alexa reached Division one as a cheerleader when she attended the University of Akron. Alexa is in peak physical shape and needs to be to meet the demands of this hugely athletic activity.
7. She suffered from an eating disorder
In her teens, Alexa fell into the grip of a terrifying eating disorder which could have claimed her life if it wasn’t for cunning intervention by her parents. They tricked her into going to the hospital to try and find out why their fifteen-year-old daughter was so unhappy and was losing so much weight, according to Whatculture. When they arrived at the hospital, the news was far worse than they had imagined. Doctors told Alexa’s parents that she could only have twenty-four hours to live if they didn’t embark upon life-saving treatment for eating disorders right away. They insisted that Alexa stay in the hospital and work through the emotional issues that were causing her to fade away. Alexa reacted well to the treatment and managed to turn her life around in the process.
The young Alexa took charger of her recovery and embarked upon a regime of healthy eating and exercise in a bid to aid her recovery. She became a bodybuilder and this ambition helped her to facilitate the exercise and eating regime that keeps her healthy to this day. She turned herself into a champion bodybuilder in the process.
6. She likes to dress up
At an event in 2016, she dressed up as Harley Quinn, the character portrayed by Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad. Alexa was participating in a Six Pack Challenge at Backlash, and her outfit certainly made her stand out amongst her competitors. Alexa has always been a fan of comic books and bad guys that are portrayed in books and films and this stunt may have been a nod to her passion for these characters. It certainly had the effect of turning heads and giving Alexa a higher profile in the wrestling world.
Alexa has also dressed up as other characters whilst in the ring. During her stint at NXT, she donned a Freddie Kruger outfit. She dressed up as many characters during her time with NXT and has said that it is a love she shares with her wrestling boyfriend, Buddy Murphy. She started out her career with a sweeter image, appearing in outfits that were compared to fairy costumes. This has probably stemmed from suggestions that the two of them evoke an on-screen relationship as a gimmick. It never came to pass but the rumors have continued according to Thesportster.
5. She loves Disney films and musicals
Alexa is a huge Disney fan and adores musicals too. When she made it as a pro wrestler she sent her mom a message quoting her favorite movie of all time, Legally Blonde and adapting the quote to suit her rise to fame within WWE. As a child, Alexa loved the Disney films and the songs that went with them. This has not changed as she has grown up, she still loves them to this day. She likes the portrayal of women as strong independent characters that Disney likes to promote and believes that this has helped her to develop a similar attitude to her wrestling career. She hopes, in turn, to inspire other young girls to attain their dreams through her story of success and overcoming adversity.
Alexa lived in Florida for some time and still regularly likes to visit Disney World. Whilst she has said that she adores the Disney princesses, her all-time favorite character is Sully, the big blue monster in Monsters Inc. her parents used to take her to Disney World when she was little even though they had a low income. They obviously wanted to indulge their daughter’s love for the film world.
4. Her parents didn’t like the idea of her becoming a wrestler
Alexa’s family are all wrestling fans, and this love of the sport gave the young Alexa her passion to enter the field. However, Alexa’s mother had great fear when her daughter entered the sport because she worried that she would end up black and blue from serious injuries inflicted on her tiny five foot one daughter. She then went on to become part of the Divas Revolution, which saw the introduction of more feminine women in the sport, using their physical strength and outer beauty to win fights. When Alexa announced her intention to try out for WWE in 2013, her mother used the example of a female wrestler Chyna as the kind of woman who could potentially crush her petite daughter according to Ringsideintel.
However, pride kicked in and once Alexa made it in the professional wrestling world, her parents were delighted, and her mother did a 180 in her attitude to wrestling. Mrs. Kaufman said it brought a tear to her eye to see the picture of her daughter in her wrestling garb with the graphic that included her daughter’s name under the WWE Smackdown Live logo.
3. She is a mega wrestling fan
Alexa grew up in a wrestling mad family and was obsessed by the sport herself whilst growing up. Alexa has said that her family would sit around the TV and watch wrestling and she associates it with a family bonding experience. Her early idols were Trish Stratus and Rey Mysterio, When Rey hit the wrestling scene in 2002 young Alexa was just ten, and she immediately loved the style of Mysterio and the way he flew around the wrestling ring according to Wwexstream.
He was a forerunner with his style of wrestling and many copied him afterward. Alexa found that through her gymnastic training she was able to emulate her hero in some ways and this has influenced her wrestling style to this day. However, Alexa’s size has been a burden. She doesn’t have the physique of a bigger woman or the strength of some taller women and has had to cut some corners to make her way in the wrestling world. She also came to the WWE as a nobody and had to work her way up. This has given her the reputation for cutting corners and using fluky moves to win, but whatever she is doing it is working.
2. Alexa Bliss is not her real name
The lady we know as Alexa, or Lexi, Bliss started out her life as Alexis Kaufman. She was born to Angela and Bob Kaufman in Ohio in 1991 and entered the WWE in 2013 under the stage name of Alexa Bliss. The suggestion as to why this moniker was chosen related back to Alexa’s southern accent. Apparently, when she would pronounce the word ‘bless’, it came out as ‘bliss’ and Alexa’s new name was created. Alexa entered the world of wrestling with a cute, southern belle image. Her catchphrase was ‘bless your heart’ and this is where the misinterpretation of the word came to be associated with Alexa and she chose it as her new name, making her more recognizable and with a story to her name, which was also easier to pronounce and remember. WWE endorsed this change as they noticed that the fans were coming to associate Alexa with the word ‘bliss’ and it stuck.
This means Alexa is one of the few women wrestlers not to have a name that was decided for her by the WWE. Her nickname developed from her own words and was popular by the bosses. Other female wrestlers use the term ‘blissed off’ when referring to their bouts with Alexa.
1. She has been subject of many rumours about her love life
Alexa has been in a relationship with fellow wrestler, Buddy Murphy for some years now, having met him when she first entered the professional wrestling arena when Alexa was the manager for the tag team that Murphy was on. The partnership worked well as Alexa was given some screen time and able to make her way in the wrestling world and Murphy went on to win fights with partner, Wesley Blake. However, this relationship has not stopped the rumors of other men in her life.
There have been suggestions of a rift with Murphy, and her name has been linked with fellow wrestler Braun Strowman. The two of them have been friends on and off screen for some time but when they were paired together in the Mixed Match Challenge against each other, the rumors started to fly. A terrible rumor flew around the internet that Alexa was what is known as a ‘ring rat’. This is the wrestling equivalent of a ‘groupie’ and the troll who targeted Alexa with this accusation said that she slept with wrestlers, managers and anyone who would have her. Alexa replied with a simple tweet that implied she had nothing to answer to and was proud of her reputation and nothing more developed from it.