As covered earlier by Christopher McManus on WrestleZone, Nia Jax had an interview with Bleacher Report before her match (or matches) at WWE Royal Rumble last night and talked about the words Charlotte Flair gave her after accidentally punching Becky Lynch. Jax also shared her very first wrestling experience when seeing a bloody Peter Maivia:
Nia Jax on Charlotte Flair’s words of encouragement post-Becky Lynch punch:
“At the moment, I know it sucks. But look what it’s done for Becky. Look what it’s done for me,” Flair told her. “Look what it’s done for you as a heel.”
Flair’s words of encouragement helped Jax see how good things could come out of a bad situation. “I didn’t really think of it that way when I was getting told to go die and never come out of my hole again,” Jax says. “Some of the tweets really were going off the rails. But when she put it in that perspective, I started to think about it differently. Now, it’s something that people will remember forever. It was crazy, but it turned into something pretty cool.”
On her first wrestling experience:
When she was five or six years old, Jax discovered an old newspaper clipping on her dad’s bedroom nightstand. She picked it up and looked at the photograph on the newsprint: It was her father’s cousin Peter Maivia, the famous “High Chief” wrestler and patriarch of the legendary Anoa’i pro wrestling family Jax and her cousin Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson were part of.
In the photo, Maivia was covered in so much blood that his hair was drenched in it. But he was grinning ear to ear, and he was holding a bright championship belt.
“He had this big smile on his face,” Jax says. “I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.”
Her father, Joseph Fanene, discovered Jax staring at the newspaper and reassured her that Maivia wasn’t hurt. “He’s OK, Bubby Girl,” he told her, using the moniker he’d given her. “It’s OK. He’s not hurt.”
Jax wasn’t sure. After all, Maivia was covered in blood. How could he be OK?
“That was my first experience with wrestling and with our family legacy,” she says.
You can read the original Bleacher Report article by going here.
RELATED: Nia Jax Opens Up On The Becky Lynch Punch Incident And Becoming A Positive Role Model
