WWE legend and former women’s world champion Lita recently spoke with DAZN about her participation in the “Tag Me In” initiative, and how she believes that all pro-sports, including wrestling, needing to put a bigger focus on mental health. Highlights from the interview are below.
On the Tag Me In initiative:
“October is Mental Health Month. It just seemed like the perfect time to start this initiative. With professional wrestling, the whole exterior is to be tough and not show pain when you’re not in the match, to not show pain physically, but to also extend that to not show pain mentally. So we just started this conversation amongst ourselves with friends in the business and said, ‘Okay, we need to smash that. We need to break open that and not make it a taboo subject.’ I think it needs to extend on both sides, both physically and mentally, to go, ‘Yeah, that did hurt.’ Because that’s the whole thing and wrestling to go, ‘Are you okay? Did you know that hurt?’ And you’re like, ‘No, no, I’m good. I’m good.’ So that also extends to mentally. I think it’s just trying to maintain that superhero exterior among anybody but your most inner circle. I think it’s as we talk and open this discussion, we realize that we all have a lot more in common or maybe have down days that it would have been nice for someone to check in on or felt more comfortable to go, ‘Yeah, I’m just kind struggling today, or I’m not feeling my best and have somebody go, let’s talk about it, or I’m also not feeling great and not just knowing that other people that you perceive as being so invincible and fearless and strong have these days that they don’t feel those things.’”
Talks her mental health battles and whether she faced them in WWE:
“I am a talker. I’ve been so fortunate that I’m close friends with a core group of my girlfriends from high school. They’ve always been a great support system for me. So I just had that built-in for me for a long time. I would get in the rental car after my match, or if I had a bad day at work, or if I had something I felt I needed to get off my chest that I built that network in that I would go to one and if they don’t answer the phone, I’m going to go to the next one on the phone and be like, ‘No, you’re gonna listen to this.’I find a lot of times, even if it’s just like getting it out, so it isn’t suppressed in there and having someone go, ‘Yeah, that does suck.’ And you go, ‘Great, thanks, I feel better now. That’s all I needed.’ It was just someone to listen to me and not feel that I had to bottle this up and keep going. I’ve been fortunate. I don’t like to bottle things up. It doesn’t bode well for me because then I’m going to lash out at the poor cashier at my grocery store, and that’s not right.”
Says professional sports needs to put more of a focus on mental health:
“I think definitely in professional sports, it’s more focused, and just checking in would be great. There are these huge companies in professional sports, and just to add an additional point of resource to check in, I think it could provide huge benefits and potentially more profits, which obviously any company is looking at. But if you can have your performers performing at a top level because they feel great, that works for everyone. I would love that.”