Humble beginnings
In the early 2000′s headlines surrounding Nease High School in St. Johns County, FL tended to center around a home-schooled student who was playing on the football team. Tim Tebow went onto national prominence in college football and beyond. But there was another student there who didn’t get the attention as a teen but that quickly changed after graduation.
A young woman named Victoria Crawford walked the halls of Nease High. She struggled through school with temporary blindness in her left eye and had dreams of going to college and getting into ophthalmology. But things changed when someone from the world of wrestling took notice of her. “I was trying to pay for my life and then WWE gave up an opportunity where they could pay for school. Like college, education,” said Crawford.
Soon enough college life was overwhelmed by the reality of the world of professional wrestling and Crawford was off to Kentucky-based Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW). That is the developmental territory World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) uses to train new wrestlers. Everyone from John Cena to Melina Perez has come through there. Crawford spent much of 2006 through 2008 in OVW and Florida Championship Wrestling, another independent promotion that a lot of future WWE stars come through. Then by mid-2008 she got the call up to the big time to play a character she was quite unfamiliar with.
The Wedding Planner
When Crawford was brought onto WWE’s Smackdown show she officially adopted the name the world knows her as, Alicia Fox. And she wasn’t brought in the way many new wrestlers were, she was immediately thrust into an angle involving two of the company’s top stars. Multi-time world Champion Edge was involved in an on-screen romance with the show’s “General Manager” (in storyline) Vickie Guerrero. The two were planning on getting married in storyline and brought in a wedding planner. That wedding planner was Alicia Fox, played by Crawford. But there was an odd reality for Crawford regarding this new role, she knew very little in real life about weddings. “I had never gone to a wedding before,” said Crawford. “So I sat with wedding planner kind of came up with my own and I’m like 19. I’m like what’s going on.”
While it may seem like the role of wedding planner was a minor one, it became a major role when in classic pro-wrestling fashion a scandal unfolded. During the wedding which was being held in the middle of the ring, Triple H crashed it and played a video recorded on a hidden camera that showed Edge and Fox passionately kissing, ruining the wedding.
“It was just an interesting thing because I thought I was coming up to be a wrestler,” said Crawford. “But in real life coming up and being part of that segment was like the first real foundation or fundamental step that my career really took.”
A WWE fixture
Following the wedding planner angle Crawford took a few months hiatus as WWE figured out how to transform her into a regular wrestler. She eventually was back on WWE TV as a manager and then eventually a wrestler. Then Crawford started getting booked in matches and the rest was WWE Diva history. She went on to feud with the greats in the Diva and eventual Women’s division. From Trish Stratus to Michelle McCool to Lita — Crawford faced them all. She also won her first title in 2010 when she was crowned “Divas” champion.
Prior to the current iteration of the Women’s division, female performers were called “Divas”. WWE eventually moved away from that but before they did the company produced the popular show “Totally Divas”. It was a reality show based primarily on the female performers and their personal lives. Crawford was a big part of that show. She said that became an odd dynamic because pro wrestling by its very nature is a form of reality television, and then to also star in an actual reality show made balancing real life and an on camera fictional character hard to juggle.
“It became a little more difficult to separate the persona from myself when we had that reality TV kind of coming in,” said Crawford. “It was good for the moment but it was kind of a complex situation because we’re reality’ing over here and then we’re reality’ing over and playing it in our wrestling world.”
2023 and beyond
Crawford finally ended her tenure with WWE after 17 years in early 2023. And for the first time in her adult life she’s free of the “Machine” as she refers to the WWE. “I’m just really taking it in. Like how can I be a part of it,” said Crawford as she branches out into other interests. On her Instagram page you can see art and photography are another passion of hers. She’s utilizing that with other up and coming wrestlers. “I’ve been able to talk to a few of the independent performers and arrange where I can come shoot them in their gear. And their stuff. I don’t care what they want me to shoot as long as we can encapsulate an expression for them.”
Beyond that, she still sounds open to continuing in the wrestling industry in the future and has participated in shows as recently in July where she participated in an event put on by Booker T.