All wrestlers have to start somewhere on the path to making their dreams a reality, whether it be a wrestling school, church basement, bingo hall, etc. From there, those wrestlers work their way up to the pinnacle of their dreams. For many, that’s a career in WWE or more recently AEW, IMPACT Wrestling or even NJPW. But sometimes the journey is just as important as the destination. In LWOPW’s newest feature, “Before They Were Famous,” we take a look at the pre-WWE careers of some of the company’s top current stars, following along on their road to superstardom. This time, we take a look at “The Goddess,” Alexa Bliss.
Alexa Bliss is one of the most accomplished wrestlers in the past decade of WWE. She was the first-ever Raw and SmackDown Women’s Champion in history, winning the Raw title three-times and the SmackDown twice. She also has two WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship reigns on her mantle, making her one of the winningest women in the history of WWE. But her story to that point is a unique one, as she has been WWE for life when it comes to her professional wrestling career.
Here’s a look at Bliss’s life before she signed to the WWE, as her road to being famous is one special story of tough times and bouncing back in a huge way.
Before They Were Famous: Alexa Bliss
Alexa Bliss, real name Alexis Kaufmann, was a top athlete in her younger years competing in a number of sports including gymnastics, kickboxing, and track. Her most accomplished athletic skill came in cheerleading, as it gave her a Division I status when she attended the University of Akron. And while this is all shining and great, it wasn’t always the easiest of times for her.
Browsing through fb found this little gem . university of Akron cheer! #UA #Akron pic.twitter.com/KgCAKhtZZ0
— Lexi (Kaufman) Cabrera (@AlexaBliss_WWE) July 29, 2015
At the age of 15 years old, Bliss was diagnosed with anorexia, an eating disorder. She discussed the situation with the New York Post in an interview, explaining how she was told that she’d probably die from it.
“I remember my mom sitting me down and telling me I was in the hospital and she was like, ‘You are probably going to die from this’ because the doctors were telling her 1 in 4 people die from it and I was going to be that one because my body wasn’t responding,” Bliss said. “My heart wasn’t responding. Everything was just going downhill and I didn’t see it. Your brain doesn’t see it. I remember being in the hospital and not knowing why.
“It’s one of those things you don’t know who you are. You become something completely different and it consumes your entire life. It consumes everything about you. That is why I try to be so open about it because people going through it, it consumes them and you tell them it doesn’t have to. You can move past your eating disorder and not let it have control over your life anymore.”
Bliss explained in the interview that she had to see five doctors every day and it was her friend, Erin, who really made her realize it was time to change. As her friend was looking at her food and trying to lose weight, Bliss saw it was time to change.
“It was for me and it was for people around me because it doesn’t just affect you, it affects people around you,” Bliss said in the interview. “That fact that I was literally taking my best friend and morphing her into that bad path, it wasn’t okay with me.”
Bliss changed for the better, but unfortunately, there was a relapse with anorexia that led her to a bodybuilding career. A career that was so impressive that she made it to the world’s most famous competition, the Arnold Classic. She credits that change in her life to why she eventually signed with WWE in 2013 on a developmental contract.
#DidYouKnow that @AlexaBliss_WWE became one of the youngest competitors to receive her IFBB Professional status in competitve bodybuilding.#AlexaAtWWELive #WWELiveIndia pic.twitter.com/o7aciOyN9f
— WWE India (@WWEIndia) November 22, 2017
As we know now, Bliss clearly was cut for this considering her immense success that only continues today. Now with her seemingly taken by “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt, it seems her career path is going a new, different direction that has plenty of intrigue. It was a long road for Bliss to get here, but as she says, it made her who she is today.
More From LWOPW
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. WWE fan? You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the WWE Network.
