WWE star Paige says sex tape leak left her with stress-induced anorexia and really horrible thoughts: 'I lost all my hair'
Saraya-Jade Bevis, who most will recognize by her WWE stage name Paige, has come a long, long way since she made her in-ring debut in Vince McMahon's company as a fresh-faced 18-year-old close to a decade ago.
Since then, she has captured the Divas Championship twice -- becoming the youngest champion in the title's history at the age of 21 -- became the inaugural NXT Women's Champion, bowed out of the company after suffering a career-threatening neck injury, made a spectacular return, and had a movie about her life that starred Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.
While her injury was bad enough, things took a turn for the worse in March 2017 when various sex tapes and photos of her were leaked online. While Bevis put on a brave face with the media and online, she revealed to Fox News in a recent interview that the leaks had impacted her emotionally and left her suffering from "horrible" thoughts, as well as stress-induced anorexia.
She said it was very hard to stay positive "when you have something that's so publicly humiliating to yourself" and that her emotional state had taken a beating because of how, at the same time, she was getting surgery done for her neck injury. "I had stress-induced anorexia," she revealed. "I lost all my hair. I had some really horrible thoughts. I had to go to therapy. It took me a while to get over because obviously, no woman wants to go through that."
But she said she realized that there was no point in moping about the situation because it was already out there and that she knew she had to fight through it.
"I was like, 'OK I can't change this,'" she said. "Same with me not being able to wrestle. I can't change this. There's nothing I can do about it. So why am I still dwelling on it? It happened. People have seen it."
"Everyone's done that kind of stuff and it happened a long time ago when I was young and dumb and stuff happens and then you know, unfortunately, it was released but I'm just like, 'Hey, it is what it is. I can't change it,'" she added.
She said she used the incident as a learning experience and is now working to ensure that no one else has to suffer the way she did. "I'm going with the Bella Twins and we went to a woman's hostel place, with kids and stuff, like I get to go talk to kids about it, I'm just like, 'Hey, like never do something when it comes to your phones,'" she said. "Because like this is a different world nowadays."
"Like things come out and things happen so I was like, 'You have to think twice before you make the same kind of mistake as I did.' So now I get to use it and utilize it on a different platform and help others with it."