- Jax has won the Queen Of The Ring tournament and WWE Women’s Title since returning to the company last year
- Her current rivalry with Bayley goes back nine years to the pair’s NXT days
- An upcoming UK tour will see Jax and Bayley come full circle from their first title match against each other in London, in 2015
In mid-December of 2015, only seven months after making her in-ring debut for WWE, Nia Jax must have felt as though Christmas had come early.
Stepping out through the curtain into a Wembley Arena packed to the rafters with over 10,000 fans in attendance, Jax was set to fight for her first ever title in professional wrestling, challenging Bayley for the NXT Women’s Championship. The title match would form a prominent part of NXT’s TakeOver: London card that night, representing a division that had lit the blue touch paper on the Women’s Revolution in WWE.
And while the rookie Jax would come up short in the English capital on that festive December evening in 2015, nine years later, it is her title that is being defended against Bayley tomorrow night (Saturday October 5th) at WWE’s upcoming Bad Blood Premium Live Event in Atlanta.
The pair will also once again do battle on British shores over the gold too, with Jax and Bayley currently scheduled to face off against each other when WWE touch down for a UK tour in a couple of weeks time, including a first ever show at Manchester’s new Co-Op Live Arena (the biggest indoor arena in Europe, as an FYI).
These forthcoming battles between two veterans of the women’s division are a destination that has been reached via a hell of a turbulent journey for Jax, who just less than three years ago could not have been further away from the glory of her last 12 months.
December 2021 was a far less wonderful time of the year than December 2015, as Jax was released from her contract with WWE. Despite pushes with the Women’s Tag Team Titles, a Raw Women’s Title victory at WrestleMania 34 and a history making night in which she became the first person to compete in both the women’s and men’s Royal Rumble matches, Jax, along with dozens of her colleagues across 2020 and 2021, were deemed surplus to requirements and saw in 2022 as a free agent for the first time in her career. Of course, there was plenty of advice and support to be had from her extended Anoaʻi family members, but even so, it was the ultimate gut check time for the former Raw Women’s and Tag Team champion.
The progess that has been made by the 40-year-old during her time away and her time back on WWE’s main roster is there for all to see. Jax feels like a superstar who has tied together her multitude of intangibles to become an undeniable presence for Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque to utilise as the unstoppable force of his women’s division.
And for Jax, her near decade-long on-screen beef with Bayley has helped shape a lot of what she has grown to become.
“It’s pretty incredible,” Jax begins as she reminisces over her countless encounters with the former WWE Women’s Champion over the years, “I appreciate Bayley so much for who she is in the women’s locker room. She’s become such a staple not just for the women but for the men too. She’s such a great person and such a wealth of knowledge. It’s kinda cool to see how it’s been nearly a decade of Bayley and I going back-and-forth.”
Jax herself is now entering the stage of her own career where – with so many burgeoning talents looking to burst through the glass ceiling in the WWE women’s division, whether it’s on Raw, SmackDown or NXT – the locker room leader in her is beginning to emerge.
“Y’know, I never considered myself somebody to look up to. But I do like to be there for people and lead by example. So if anybody does need something from me I’m definitely somebody who has no problem stopping whatever I’m doing to help others out. But going back to Bayley, she is top tier, backstage, in the locker room, I know a lot of the young girls we have here can learn a lot from how incredible she is.”
Learning is certainly what Jax did during her two years away from WWE and, as this weekend’s Bad Blood card shapes up with fellow former exilees such as WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and blood rivals CM Punk and Drew McIntyre occupying the top tier positions on the card, the Queen of the Ring’s return is further proof that sometimes being away from the bright lights is what makes a talent shine the most.
And for Jax, her near decade-long on-screen beef with Bayley has helped shape a lot of what she has grown to become.
“It’s pretty incredible,” Jax begins as she reminisces over her countless encounters with the former WWE Women’s Champion over the years, “I appreciate Bayley so much for who she is in the women’s locker room. She’s become such a staple not just for the women but for the men too. She’s such a great person and such a wealth of knowledge. It’s kinda cool to see how it’s been nearly a decade of Bayley and I going back-and-forth.”
Jax herself is now entering the stage of her own career where – with so many burgeoning talents looking to burst through the glass ceiling in the WWE women’s division, whether it’s on Raw, SmackDown or NXT – the locker room leader in her is beginning to emerge.
“Y’know, I never considered myself somebody to look up to. But I do like to be there for people and lead by example. So if anybody does need something from me I’m definitely somebody who has no problem stopping whatever I’m doing to help others out. But going back to Bayley, she is top tier, backstage, in the locker room, I know a lot of the young girls we have here can learn a lot from how incredible she is.”
Learning is certainly what Jax did during her two years away from WWE and, as this weekend’s Bad Blood card shapes up with fellow former exilees such as WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and blood rivals CM Punk and Drew McIntyre occupying the top tier positions on the card, the Queen of the Ring’s return is further proof that sometimes being away from the bright lights is what makes a talent shine the most.
“A hundred percent it was the best thing that happened to me in wrestling. For me to go away and reset myself and do things for a different purpose. I’m really cool with Drew McIntyre, he’s such an incredible person and I know he feels the same as me. He came back with a different purpose and his drive is so different. It’s really cool to watch him. I remember when I won Queen of the Ring he sent me this incredible message and it brought a tear to my eye because we’ve gone through the same journey where it was was like ‘what do we do? what’s going to happen?’
“So I definitely think it’s a cool thing for people to step away. Sometimes people don’t need that, and that’s amazing too, but for some of us it allows us to come back with a different hunger and a different vision.”
As WWE women’s Champion, Jax is now positioned atop the women’s roster on SmackDown but her evolution is far from over, as is evidenced when I discuss the current diversity of the female division across the company. It is a global accumulation of talent that the champ is only too happy to draw inspiration from.
“I’m such a huge, huge fan of the Japanese girls,” Jax tells me, “I’ve had plenty of head on collisions with Asuka and honestly those have been some of my favourite matches because she’s so intense in the ring and you can just feel that passion from her and you can’t help but take on the same feelings when you’re in there with her. I really enjoy the Japanese style of wrestling. Giulia’s coming into NXT and I’m watching her, she had a great match with Roxanne Perez the other night.
“I just love that we have a division, not only on the main roster but in NXT where every young girl watching the show can say ‘I look like her’ or ‘I’m like her’. There’s something that little girls can strive to be when they’re looking at our division. It’s such a diverse division of all kinds of athletes from big, small, short, tall that they can think ‘I can be like that one day’ and that’s what makes me so happy, because growing up that was different for me and now I’m able to help be an example for the younger generation.
“And I’m also really excited to see what Stephanie Vaquer can do. I got to face Lyra Valkyria at Queen of the Ring and obviously I’ve seen her before but that was the first time we’ve ever been in the ring together and she is such an incredible athlete, she’s done such great things since she came up from NXT. I’m not gonna sit here and be humble, the women’s division is hot af, right now.”
But Jax’s work hasn’t always been limited to the women’s division. Infamously, in 2019, the Women’s Champion entered the men’s Royal Rumble, making history as the first person to participate in both Rumble matches on the same night and gave the WWE audience the first taste of intergender wrestling the promotion had seen since the lawless days of the early 00’s.
For Jax, it was just as much a surprise to her as it was the audience.
“So I had been rehearsing for the women’s rumble match and then as we were about to walk backstage because the doors were opening I was approached by a producer saying ‘hey you’re also in the men’s rumble tonight’ and I was like ‘what!? You’re kidding, right?’ and I didn’t have time to rehearse, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve never wrestled these guys before. But fortunately I was in the ring with some of the best to ever do it; Rey, Randy [Orton], Dolph [Ziggler], Andrade, [Mustafa] Ali. We all sat in a room and went through everything. They told me to trust them and I did.
“But someone like Rhea Ripley, who is such a formidable character, her getting in the ring with the men, I can see that too. Rhea vs Dom, if that’s where the story took them, that would be an incredible match. I think people would love to see it. Dom’s such a dirty little character that Rhea beating him up would be fun to see.”
“I definitely feel like Randy and I need to revisit our beef. I would love to step in the ring with Kofi Kingston, too. Those are the two that stand out for me. But I wouldn’t mind getting in there with Dom, too. Why not? He deserves it. He’s just a little s**t,” Jax laughs as she lists her list of dream opponents for any future intergender confrontations in the future.
And coming full circle, Jax now looks ahead to being the defending champion against Bayley this weekend at Bad Blood in Atlanta and then, returning to the country where her title journey began almost a decade ago, their adventure will continue further still in the United Kingdom later this month.
WWE Bad Blood airs live on Saturday October 5th from 8PM BST on Peacock and the WWE Network
