WWE's Shotzi Shaves Her Head on Camera
WWE Superstar Shotzi shaved her head on camera during her appearance on WWE SmackDown. And while the move might look like it's part of the storyline that includes her, Bayley and Iyo Sky, Shotzi revealed the real reason why she shaved her head which involves her sister. On her Instagram Story shortly after the video aired, Shotzi said she changed her hairstyle to support her sister who has cancer, per Cageside Seats. Shotzi's sister Shawn was diagnosed with liver cancer last year, and a GoFundMe Page has been set up to cover Shawn's medical expenses.
In February, Shawn had surgery to remove a portion of her liver. Around that time, it was discovered that the cancer has spread to at least one of her lymph nodes, and Shawn began a six-month course of chemotherapy to stop the spread. "Shawn was officially staged with stage III B cholangiocarcinoma because found that the cancer had spread to 1 of her lymph nodes after testing 7 of them post surgery," an update from Carmi Reyes said on the GoFundMe page, "and will have to start chemotherapy as soon as possible to stop the spread for 6 months."
Shotzi (real name Ashley Urbanski) has been with WWE since 2019 but did appear on the sixth season of WWE's competition series Tough Enough in 2015. She had to withdraw from the completion due to an undiagnosed irregular heartbeat causing a failed medical. When Shotzi returned in 2019, she was part of NXT for nearly three years before being called up to the main roster in 2021. In her career, Shotzi won the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship with Ember Moon and was named NXT Breakout Star of the Year in 2020.
In 2021, Shotzi talked about her first experience with WWE on the Wild On podcast with Taylor Wilde. "My first experience with WWE was Tough Enough. I was at the last Tough Enough, I made it into the house, but I ultimately got booted off because of medical reasons," she said, per Fightful. "They found a heart condition that I wasn't aware of and it was a whirlwind of emotions because I got into the house and I was like, 'Oh my God, are you kidding me?! This is crazy.' Then the next day they were like, 'never mind.'
"I went home after that and like I didn't really know what to do at first because I was kind of scared and I didn't really know what was going on with my body. I didn't know that I had any sort of heart condition. If I wrestle or try to do cardio can I just die? I didn't really have health insurance. It was a long process for me to like get rechecked out, I didn't even have anything to like show a doctor [as proof.] So it was weird for me like coming back from that and I kind of, for a month, was unmotivated to wrestle because I was scared. Eventually, I was just like, screw it. Whatever happens, happens, I'm just going to keep wrestling."