11 Things You Didn't Know About WWE's Tatum Paxley
9. How She Got Into WWE Via Retail
This entry kinda feeds into the whole 'lost in life' point as a broader subject, but it turns out that being lost temporarily never means a person needs to be lost forever. They simply need some sort of spark and a sense of direction. Point them the right way, then watch them fly. In Tatum's case on SmackDown recently, that's meant literally.
Paxley was working at a supplement store as a manager back before signing with WWE, and she's admitted during interviews that “retail was just killing me”. A friend who was into pro wrestling (and worked as a wrestler herself, although Tatum hasn't named this person) turned her onto the industry, and she’d YouTube matches in her spare time. That's when the store manager grew obsessed with it.
She didn't grow up as a fan of wrestling, or anything. There were no Monday Night Raw watch parties or sleepovers in the Paxley household, and Tatum didn't put stickers of WWE stars like John Cena, Batista or Trish Stratus on her lunchbox at school. She was late to the whole wrestling shindig, but better late than never it seems.
Tatum enjoyed checking out the vast library of WWE matches available at her fingertips. Interestingly, she hasn't cited the old WWE Network as a valuable archive or learning tool when first soaking in everything she could about wrestling. No, no this writer will never forgive the company for doing away with that resource. It was, indeed, a time to be alive.
RIP to old episodes of WCW Thunder nobody else cares about.