WWE has a number of projects hitting the small screen, but its latest one is a bit different from the rest. That would be the new series Fight Like a Girl, which is exclusive to Quibi and has Stephanie McMahon pairing WWE superstars with someone who is trying to overcome an obstacle in their life. Whether that be confidence, fear, or a disorder, WWE and a superstar will work with them for 10 weeks to help them move forward, and the first episode features a very personal story for Alexa Bliss. That episode is where we meet Holly, who is trying to overcome an eating disorder, and during a ComicBook.com’s recent conversation with Bliss all about the show, seeing Holly at the end of it ended up being a very emotional moment for her.
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“What’s crazy is when it came to the story with her, I’m not an emotional person by any means,” Bliss said. “It’s hard for me to… I don’t know, I don’t get choked up very easily, but when I saw her come out, I literally lost it. I started crying and I was so happy for her and just so proud of her. She’s gone through a lot and even more than just her eating disorder.”
Bliss gave Holly several pieces of advice, but one of the most important pieces had to do with your own self-worth. “I guess the biggest piece of advice I told her is that you can’t let someone else determine your self-worth,” Bliss said. “And because she had gone through a lot of things with her boyfriend, her family, her job, where she was living, I had to tell her that you have to kind of be your own person and not let someone else determine your self-worth. You have to be willing to make a change. Because I’ve been through the mental struggles that she had gone through and I told her, ‘You’re not going to get help unless you really want to help yourself.’ And that was the biggest thing for me, when I was going through my issues, a part of me during part of it, I didn’t want help and I wasn’t willing to get better than I was. And that’s when everything changed.”
While awareness of eating disorders has become more prevalent in recent years, there are still some misconceptions about what it’s like to deal with one every day and what inspires someone to get through it.
“The worst thing you can say to someone with an eating disorder is why don’t you eat or just do this or just do that, because if we could, we would’ve,” Bliss said. “I remember I wanted to get a hamburger, and it was an actual fear in my head to where I would literally shake because I was too afraid to put food in my mouth. It becomes this OCD obsession, addiction, fear, and it would literally cause me to have panic attacks and anxiety attacks. I think that’s the misconception that people think that we just choose to do this. My eating disorder, it came from simple dieting. I wasn’t trying to lose weight. I was just trying to get healthy. And then it became an addiction and obsession and my brain kind of took over and I didn’t even notice what I was doing to myself. And I think people think that either women do it for attention or they choose not to eat, when that’s not the case at all.”
While the Fight Like a Girl process runs 10 weeks, WWE is in this for the long haul, because many of these aren’t issues that are solved or healed in a few weeks.
“Right. Yeah. You’ll see that we periodically check on our girls and I remember having a conversation with the producers and with WWE right after I first met her and I told them, I was like, ‘You guys realize that this is something serious. She’s going to need more than this amount of time of therapy.’ They were super understanding of that,” Bliss said. “I know that they were talking about giving her more therapy and stuff like that, and because I told them, I was like, ‘She’s at the point where she could go either way’. I was like, ‘I don’t want her working out too hard because she could go into cardiac arrest. She’s so tiny.’ And so they were really understanding and they actually asked me a lot about what should we be doing with her. ‘How should we approach this?’”
“Because they wanted to be as understanding as they could be, especially because it’s a life or death situation,” Bliss said. “People don’t understand how dangerous eating disorders are, but you’re literally starving your body to the point of where it’s going to fail, and I didn’t want her working out too hard because I remember I almost went into cardiac arrest from just walking around. I was telling WWE and the producers number one how they need to tread lightly and they were very respectful of that and asked a bunch of questions and wanted to be as respectful and as proactive as they could be.”
Fans can meet a number of amazing people in Fight Like a Girl, and if there’s one thing Bliss wants fans to take away from it, it’s that like they learned, you are never alone.
“I think what everyone should take away from Fight Like a Girl is that no matter what, if you have the support system and people who want to see you succeed, you can overcome anything,” Bliss said. “A lot of people think that they have to go through things on their own, but they don’t. A lot of people go through the insecurities that these women had gone through, depression, with their weight, with personal things that they’re going through in their life. And a lot of the people, I remember saying, they felt like they were on their own, but you’re never on your own. There will always be someone there to talk to, someone to help you through what you’re going through. So I guess just don’t ever think that you’re alone because someone’s always going to be there to help you along the way and will help you succeed.”
You can check out Holly and Bliss’ episode of Fight Like a Girl as well as many more on Quibi right now, which is available on iOS and Android. You can watch Bliss in action in the ring every Friday night on SmackDown, which airs on FOX at 7 pm CST.
Let us know what you think of the show in the comments and as always you can hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things WWE!
