Nia Jax opens up about dealing with negativity online.
Nia Jax has been a polarizing figure in the wrestling world, and she is often the target of harsh posts on social media. WWE released Jax in November 2021, but she made her return on the September 11 episode of WWE RAW.
Speaking on WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick, Jax was asked about dealing with hatred online.
“I obviously can’t deny that I get a lot of hatred online,” Nia Jax said. “But in the beginning, I was like, ‘Oh, this’ll be good. This’ll be…the character will keep going on.’ t the end of the day, when you’re by yourself and you’re on your phone, and you’re looking at the constant hate, hate, hate, you’re like, ‘Okay.’ Then you’re second-guessing yourself. I’m second-guessing everything I’ve done. I need to improve and I need to do this, and I need to impress them. The internet is really hating what I’m doing right now. It really, really messed me up. It got me into such a sad place. When I got released, I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course. Why not? I suck. Everybody hates me. There’s no need for me to be here anymore.’
“But then when I got to my therapy, and I’ve always said this before, I don’t think anybody who’s a happy person goes online and [expletive] other people. I had to put it in perspective, like, ‘Okay, this is a character. In WWE, Nia Jax is blended with Lina. It’s not like they run credit like Nia Jax is Lina, right?’ So people always [expletive] on me, like when they see me in the street, people are like, ‘Nia, you suck,’ or whatever. But Lina over here is actually a good person.”
Nia Jax Says She Has Learned To Separate Herself From Her Character
Nia Jax continued by recalling a time when a fan shouted that she sucked while she was getting off a plane at an airport. She then described how her life coach has helped her see that critics are picking on her character, not her personally.
“I was leaving an airport, like getting off a plane, and somebody, they shouted it,” Nia Jax said. “‘Nia, you suck.’ This was the funny part. ‘Nia, you suck. You’re actually not that big in person. You’re not that fat.’ [Laughs] I’m like, ‘Thanks.’ [Laughs] You know, it’s fun. My life coach, she would just sit there and just constantly remind me of the fact that you have to find the happiness within yourself because nobody happy is gonna sit here and [expletive] on you.
“You have to find, okay, somebody must be going through something to actually sit there online and pick somebody apart for no reason. It’s just like a bully in school. They’re unhappy. That’s why they’re picking on you. So that’s generally where I came from. Now, when I go online, it’s more like, okay, they’re picking on Nia. They’re not picking on me. They are picking on Nia, and that is a character I am very proud of because it’s being picked on.”
Nia Jax will challenge for the WWE Women’s World Championship at WWE Crown Jewel on November 4. More information is available here.
WrestleZone will have coverage of WWE RAW as it airs on October 23.
If you use these quotes, please credit the original source and link back to WrestleZone with an h/t for the transcription.
