Inside the ring, Lacey Evans is always trying to teach her opponents and the WWE Universe how to not be nasties. However, outside the ring, she has overcome many personal challenges to make sure that she could be proud of the person she sees in the mirror every day.
On the latest After The Bell podcast with Corey Graves, Lacey discusses the hard upbringing she faced with parents battling addiction and how these difficulties ultimately lead her to make the decisions that led her to join the Marine Corps at the age of 19.
"Coming from a childhood of drug addiction and depression and lots of anger, my whole life, I always wondered, I never knew what I wanted to be because my role models weren't the best. So sitting in a life like that of so much negativity and so much [of] the drugs and like I said, the depression, the only thing I knew for sure is what I didn't want to be because it was what I was looking at. It was what I was smelling. It was what I was feeling," she began. "So joining the Marine Corps at 19 years old was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. And they instilled in me all the qualities that I have today as a mother that I have today as a wife. And it taught me to see the other side of life, to see the positive in the motivation, in what you're capable of mentally, physically and emotionally. And so throughout my roughest years of life, I always stayed busy. You know, I didn't let the lifestyle that I was forced to live in consume me. Like I said, because I knew what I didn't want to be. So I stayed busy. I stayed busy in high school wrestling. I stayed I got a job at 14 as soon as I could. And I just made sure my mind was focused all the time."
She would go on to talk about a substance-free life and how she knew at an early age to stay driven towards her goals.
She continued, "Even that young. And I just kept going and I stayed busy. And I an idle mind is the devil's handiwork. And I made sure I just. No drugs, no alcohol, no nothing. I stayed sports and work until finally, at 19 years old, I decided I needed to join the Marine Corps to to to get out of it and be able to see a side of life that I could flourish in and change me and help me get out of that."
Today, Lacey is a top women's division star on WWE SmackDown. She made history earlier this year when she and Natalya competed in the first-ever women's wrestling match in Saudi Arabia at WWE Crown Jewel.
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