Shotzi: I definitely credit Bray Wyatt for turning me into a wrestler

Perhaps even more than the average pro wrestler, Shotzi’s appearance and style have always been a big part of her character and on-screen persona. This year, she made a couple of changes to her look that had deep personal meaning.

First, she shaved her head. It was clear from her social media this was done in support of Shotzi’s sister as she underwent chemotherapy. In an interview with WrestlingNews.co’s Steve Fall, Shotzi explained the situation in more detail – including how it led to her feud with Bayley & Damage CTRL:

“My sister was going through chemotherapy and she started losing her hair. She told me that she didn’t want to wait for it to all fall out. She was going to shave it off. I immediately went to Hunter and was like, ‘Hey, my sister’s going through chemo. I want to support her. I want to be there for her. I want to shave my hair off too. Can we make it not weird and make it part of a storyline so I don’t just show up one day with no hair’, and he was totally for it.

“I got to work with Bayley with it too, which Bayley has always been a huge role model to me, so to have that moment with her and share this meaningful moment with her was really awesome. I didn’t really say much of it, but like, everyone kind of knew anyway and that really resonated with my sister, and she got like a lot of support from my fans, which I really love and appreciate too.”

Shotzi was also one of several WWE Superstars and employees who got tattoos to honor Windham “Bray Wyatt” Rotunda after his tragic death this summer. In discussing that with Fall, she revealed that Wyatt actually inspired her to get into wrestling:

“I kind of credit me getting into wrestling because of him, like actually starting to wrestle. Because I had just dropped out of musical theater college, and I wanted to find an outlet for performing and I started watching WWE again. And the first crew that I noticed was the Wyatt Family. Me and my sister thought that they were just so cool and we wanted to be the female version of them, and then the rest is history. After watching them, I signed up for wrestling school like a week later, and just started taking my first bumps. So I definitely credit Bray Wyatt for turning me into a wrestler.”

For the next couple weeks, Shotzi is getting to play around with her look in a bunch of different ways as she’s returned to NXT to once again host Halloween Havoc. She & Fall also discussed her thoughts on that, which you can check out here.