Nia Jax Talks about Relationship with Dwayne Johnson and her Wrestling Career
One of current WWE superstars Nia Jax has recently turned up on Talk is Jericho, and she revealed something about her relationship with Dwayne The Rock Johnson, her cousin, but she also talked about her modeling and what made this girl pursue the career of a professional wrestler.
When asked about The Rock, Nia explained that the two of them are blood relatives, but that they didn’t spend much time together while growing up. “Dwayne’s family, like Peter, my aunt, and of them, they were traveling the world wrestling and my dad was in New Zealand. My parents met in Australia, so we didn’t move here till I was like seven [years old] to California and whatnot. I think one time in Hawaii we all met up when I was a baby, but honestly, they were living and traveling all over the world,” she said. Then she continued to explain how they finally bonded: “And, actually, I didn’t get to really re-meet him again till the premiere of Walking Tall because we were living in San Diego and he had the premiere in L.A. My aunt was like to my dad, like, ‘Oh, do you want to come up and see the premiere?’ And my dad was like, ‘Do you want to come with me?’ and I was like, ‘uh, yeah! That’d be cool!”
Nia Jax moved on to tell us how she never felt comfortable in a role of a model, even though she did stay in the world of modeling for almost a decade, on and off. “I was a plus-size model in my 20s and I was kind of used to being around celebrities, but I’m so tall and celebrities, like, when you meet them [it is much different from seeing them on TV]… When you see them on TV, you’re like, ‘oh my gosh! That’s crazy!’ And when I went there [to the Walking Tall premiere], I was a giant in comparison to everybody. I was in these heels and it felt very awkward,” Nia shared her feelings.
She also told us that her modeling days started back in high school. Here’s how she describes how it all started: “I got signed out of high school to New York [for modeling]. There was a scout. There was a manager. He just like saw my face and said, ‘I think you should get into modeling and send some pictures to Wilhelmina New York,’ this modeling agency, and they signed me. I did a lot of lingerie modeling, like, for plus-size, like Macy’s, and Dillard’s, and Bloomingdale’s. I was like on a billboard in New York one time in like a bra and underwear. Yeah.”
Having recalled her not so enjoyable career as a model, Nia moved on to tell us a little bit more about wrestling, which is still her passion. She claims that it was the match between The Rock and John Cena that inspired her to become a wrestler. “Well, WrestleMania 28, me and my other cousin, Christian, like this 6’4″ dancer, he’s crazy, we decided to go out to Miami to go watch Rock versus Cena. And I’ve been to shows before, but we were sitting front row during the main event and I was just like, ‘this is insane, the energy, the feeling’,” Nia remembered her enthusiasm.
Jax also noted that Johnson helped her a lot when she made a decision to pursue the career of a wrestler. “We were in the process of trying to get me into a wrestling school, Afa, yeah Afa, he has a wrestling school over near Orlando and so my aunt was trying to get me to go there and I was doing all the stuff that I need to do. And then, Dwayne had heard about the Performance Center. And he said, ‘well, why don’t we have you try out to see if maybe that’s even something that you’d like to do, like go in there and see what it is.’ And so I had the three-day tryout at the Performance Center,” she explained.
Not only did he help her enter the world of the great wrestlers, but he stood by her side all the way during her career. “When I first started, well first, we just tried not to let everybody know I was related because the first thing he said was, ‘you might get a little heat being related to me.’ He was just like, ‘you don’t need to go around repeating that,’ which I didn’t. Yeah, he was just like, ‘make sure that you’re respectful, always shaking hands, asking questions, staying later, working as hard as you can’,” Jax claims. She couldn’t help but highlight how supportive Johnson always is: “He really cares and even when I’m insecure about my body he just puts me completely at ease and that’s what he does. Any insecurity I have, he just [puts to rest] 100%, yeah.”
