Eliminated Tough Enough contestant, Miss USA Rima Fakih, discusses her exit from the show, including exclusively revealing a rib injury that didn’t feature on the show that led to her being cut. Rima also talks about her fellow contestants, the trainers, shattering preconceived notions of a beauty queen and more. Plus, Miss USA reveals an incident in the house with Andy that led to her to throwing a drink in his face.
Listen to the interview here. Here are some highlights of what Rima said about:
On her rib injury that led to her being cut:
“This is something that nobody knows yet: I was injured. Didn’t tell anybody about it and what hurt was my ribs. I was sore everywhere… everyone was, but my ribs were really, really in a lot of pain. When I had my one-on-one session with Bill DeMott, they called me back into the ring at 10.30 at night. I was in there for probably about two hours just going at it — bumps after running — and I wouldn’t complain. I didn’t want them to think that Miss USA was like, for example, Michelle, who’s going to quit and go home, or I don’t want them to say, ‘Miss USA can’t take it’ or ‘Miss USA doesn’t want this’. No, a beauty queen can be beautiful and tough like Trish Stratus. That night when Bill asked me to give him a roll, he went and he landed on the same spot where my ribs had been fractured during a wrestling move I had done the week before. I screamed really loud and broke out crying. After leaving the show, I realized Stone Cold was only looking after my best interests. Bill DeMott said something to me that night, he said: ‘You’re in pain there? Why didn’t you say anything?’ I go, ‘Because I don’t want to look like a quitter’ and he goes, ‘Look, there’s a difference between being tough and being stupid. You need to take care of yourself’. If you ask me, I’d rather have stayed, broke a lot more ribs than I already did and battled it out.”
Her candid thoughts on Michelle Deighton:
“I’m sorry to say that she annoyed me! First of all, you don’t have 11 years experience, it was 11 years ago. It didn’t seem like she wanted to be there. It seemed like she just wanted to be on TV. I know that I’m putting her down, she didn’t do anything to me. The other thing that I’d like to say is that the way I got my rib injury is because of Michelle. If you’re in the ring and you don’t know how to wrestle, you could injure the other person and Michelle, her problem is that she wouldn’t ask questions. She’d say, ‘I know, I know, I know’. Well you really don’t know. And that’s how my injury happened. She didn’t know how to roll back and she kept falling on my ribs.”