Wrestler of the Week: Alexa Bliss
RondaRousey.com’s Wrestler of the Week series profiles significant wrestlers from the past and present.
Alexa Bliss came up in the NXT ranks in the same era as Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, and Bayley, but she didn’t have nearly the amount of buzz at the time. Yet she’s still ended up as one of the most prominent WWE performers in recent years.
Bliss—born Alexis Kaufman—didn’t have pro wrestling experience prior to being signed by WWE, but she certainly had an athletic background since an early age, from competitive bodybuilding to cheerleading to kickboxing to softball. She joined NXT in 2013 and mostly trained behind the scenes at the Performance Center for the first few months, with the very notable exception of accompanying Triple H to the ring—in costume—for his WrestleMania XXX match against Daniel Bryan, alongside Charlotte and Sasha Banks (all long before their proper main roster debuts, and unnamed on camera).
About a month after her WrestleMania cameo, Bliss had her first TV match against Alicia Fox—though it was a very different Alexa Bliss than today’s “Five Feet of Fury.” Bliss wrestled with what could only be described as a fairy princess gimmick, complete with a poofy skirt and pixie dust sprinkled as part of her entrance. As Renee Young put it on commentary: “She’s Tinkerbell. She’s adorable.”
In what was not a huge surprise, that phase didn’t last long. But after an injury-induced hiatus, Bliss found her most famous role in her NXT days—as part of a trio along with Wesley Blake and Buddy Murphy, who held the NXT Tag Team Championship for seven months. While Bliss was primarily an outside-the-ring presence, this period also sparked two of her most enduring characteristics—a cocky villainous character, and a penchant for cosplay-inspired ring gear (with looks over the years inspired by Freddy Krueger, Harley Quinn, Chucky, and Iron Man, representing a wide visual range).
Despite highlights like an NXT Women’s Championship match against Bayley, Bliss didn’t have the illustrious in-ring NXT career that her Four Horsewomen peers did, never even landing a TakeOver match. But that’s okay—as she dominated as soon as she got to the main roster. She debuted on SmackDown in July 2016 and beat Becky Lynch in her first match on the show. By December 2016, she won gold, defeating Lynch at TLC 2016 in a tables mach, becoming the second-ever SmackDown Women’s Champion.
Bliss ended up winning that championship twice, and after less than a year on SmackDown, headed to RAW in April 2017—and, yes, soon dominated there, too. She captured the RAW Women’s Championship from Bayley that same month and held onto it for nearly a year, aside from an eight-day reign from Sasha Banks in between. In that time, Bliss defied any remaining skeptics in matches like February 2018’s first-ever women’s Elimination Chamber match, where she performed her moonsault variant, “Twisted Bliss,” off the top of an Elimination Chamber pod.
Fans also got to see a different side of Bliss when she co-starred in Season 7 of Total Divas—and most importantly, the world met her pet pig, Larry Steve.
The nearly year-long reign of Bliss ended at WrestleMania 34, with Nia Jax winning the title amid a controversial storyline involving body-shaming. It wasn’t long until Bliss regained the championship—her third time on RAW, fifth on the main roster—but, well, the way she did it may not have been her wisest move.
Bliss won the Money in the Bank match at the eponymous June 2018 event, allowing a title shot at any time of her choosing—and she chose later that night, attacking both Ronda Rousey and Nia Jax during their title match, cashing in and pinning Jax. Of course, that put Bliss on a very clear (and ill-fated) collision course with Rousey, who defeated her in four minutes at SummerSlam 2018 and retained in a rematch one month later at Hell in a Cell.
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With Becky Lynch winning the Rumble, it’s not quite clear what Alexa Bliss’s Road to WrestleMania will look like this year—but it’s likely she’ll be back in a title picture soon, wearing dope cosplay while doing it.
Though Alexa Bliss and Mickie James failed to qualify for the Women’s Tag Team Championship match, WWE Elimination Chamber 2019 takes place February 17 on WWE Network.
