Alexa Bliss (real name Alexis “Lexi” Kaufman) is the first woman in WWE to win both the “Raw” and “SmackDown” Women’s Championships. She’s also now a rock song.
That’s range — especially for someone who’s only 5-feet-tall.
What’s incredible (though not coincidental) about this specific tale of a WWE character going mainstream is that “Alexa Bliss” — the song, not the character name — is from Lexi’s favorite band of all time, Bowling for Soup. The most amazing part, however, might be WWE Chairman Vince McMahon’s support of the song and its music video, in which “Little Miss Bliss” stars.
During a week celebrating WWE’s Women’s Evolution — of which Bliss has been a big part — and ahead of Sunday’s “Extreme Rules” pay-per-view — where Bliss will be cornering for her tag team partner Nikki Cross in a title match vs. “SmackDown” Women’s Champion Bayley — TheWrap asked Bliss to spare no detail in the origin story of this rare honor.
“They’ve been my favorite band since I was maybe, like, 10 or 11,” Bliss began. “I remember I saw them at the Ohio State Fair for the first time and ever since then, I’ve loved Bowling for Soup. I used to listen to them every morning before getting ready for middle school, for high school. They were my end-all, be-all favorite band. I don’t know why, I’ve just always loved them. And then I did an interview with ‘WWE2K’ at their release party at SummerSlam a few years ago and I mentioned that Bowling for Soup was my favorite band. And Jaret — the lead singer — caught wind of that and was like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool.’ And he’s a big wrestling fan, he loves the Von Erichs, the Freebirds, he loves WWE. And we became friends. And I remember, it was on my birthday, he texted me saying, ‘Hey, this is a project we’ve been working on for a while, but since it’s your birthday, I’m going to let you know.’ And he sent me the demo of the song. And it was so freakin’ cool.”
Sidebar: How big of an old-school pro-wrestling fan is Bowling for Soup frontman Jaret Reddick? His original musical stage name was actually Jaret Von Erich, an homage to the famous wrestling family The Von Erichs. (Side sidebar: Von Erich was not the actual surname of the Von Erichs — their real last name is Adkisson.)
“These jerseys in his house that he has hung up say ‘Von Erich’ on the back,” Bliss told us of Reddick’s collection.
For the uninitiated, the crossover and love affair between rock music and professional wrestling has existed way before and extends way beyond this (continuing below) story, but the Bowling-Bliss collaboration is one of a kind.
Back to it: “I was like, how many people in their lifetime grow up idolizing a band then eventually, 1) meeting them, 2) getting a song written about them, and 3) being in a music video?” Bliss told us. “But it was super cool. And immediately, because they used the name ‘Alexa Bliss,’ I had to contact Vince [McMahon] and legal and be like, ‘Hey, is this OK?’ And Vince was all for it, he thought it was super cute. He loved that it mentioned [Bliss’s pet pig] Larry Steve. Yeah, that was his favorite part, he was like, ‘I love that they mention Larry Steve.’ And I was like, really, that’s what you took from it? But it’s just so funny and really cool. It’s really cool, because it’s one of those things, you grow up idolizing a band and then you have a music video about you.”
“The music video was a lot of fun. I was just supposed to do a cameo in it, but with how our schedule opened up and aligned, I was able to be in the entire thing, which was a lot of fun,” she said. “Jaret’s son was actually one of the boys in the music video. And so it was a lot of fun. It was a full fun day. I got my hair done by Jaret’s wife, she touched up all my pink and my roots. We made a whole day of it, it was a lot of fun.”
“I had gear made specifically for the music video and then all the guys in the band signed it,” Bliss concluded.
Readers can catch Bliss, Cross and Bayley promoting Sunday’s match tonight on “SmackDown,” which airs from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Fox. The “Extreme Rules” PPV starts at 7/6c Sunday on WWE Network.
Watch the “Alexa Bliss” music video above.
Just don’t get your hopes up, this sort of thing will never happen to you. (And by that we’re referring to both Bliss’s gratifying Bowling for Soup story, and the “Weird Science”-esque fantasy sequence from the music video.)