The newest episode of WWE Icons is available to view and it features WWE Hall of Famer Beth Phoenix.
In the documentary show, Phoenix describes what it was like growing up as a fan of wrestling and how it transitioned into her wanting to become one. She openly discussed becoming the first women’s wrestler for her high school and the journey she took in college. This includes meeting Ron Hutchison who trained the likes of Trish Stratus, Edge, and Christian. This led to her trying out for Tough Enough.
Throughout Phoenix providing the timeline of her life and up through her career, she openly discusses the injury she suffered in her first singles match on Monday Night RAW. In that match, she faced Victoria, and after taking a slap where she had her mouth open ever so slightly caused a broken jaw. This almost derailed her career as it was just getting ready to take off.
“I’m finally going to have my debut as a singles wrestler, and I’m facing Victoria. And we had something planned where I was supposed to slap, and then slap back. When Victoria hit me, I had had my mouth open ever so slightly. I knew something was wrong. I stuck my tongue between my teeth and I was like, ‘ooh there’s a gap there,’ so I thought something had happened and I had lost a tooth. Trish [Stratus] took one look at me, saw that I had a little bit of blood on my mouth.
She’s just telling me, ‘smile, look up. It will be ok. It will be ok.’ So Trish walks me up to the ramp and then they hustled me into medical and I’m sitting there and I’m kind of like. ‘guys, I just lost a tooth. I’m sure it’s ok.’ And I’m sitting on the thing and then they open my mouth like this, and I saw everyone in the room recoil. Like that, that’s when I knew it was probably bad.”
Mickie James adds to the discussion, “I look and I’m like, ‘here, let me see,’ and then I’m like [gasps]. ‘Oh my god.’ Unbelievable. And who would’ve thought, on a slap. Like a slap could break someone’s jaw right there, like that. It’s insane.
Phoenix continues, “They take me to the hospital. I get x-rayed. They said your jaw is shattered, dislocated, displaced, one mandible’s up, one’s down and you have to have full plastic surgery to put everything back. You have to have steel plates in your face and screws. And it was a lot to take it.”
“I just cried. I didn’t know what else to do. I just processed everything. I was just like, I just had a singles match on Monday Night RAW, and it’s over. All of it. I just didn’t understand why. After so many years, things were going to end like this and set me back.”
After Beth healed up and did what she needed to do to get back in the ring, she was told they had nothing for her on RAW. She had to go back to OVW [developmental back then] and basically had to start over. Going back to OVW helped her refocus a gimmick and The Glamazon was born. She would then eventually go back on the road and says it never stopped from there.
She talked heavily on the influence that Chyna had on her as a person and throughout her career.
The documentary includes appearances from, Molly Holly, Mickie James, Ember Moon, Rhea Ripley, Natalya, Bianca Belair, and more.
You can watch the WWE Icons Revisited below for additional love for Beth outside the actual documentary.
WWE Icons is now available on Peacock and the WWE Network.
Have you watched it? What did you think of Beth’s journey? Discuss below.
