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Phoenix: No, I'm not a natural pinkhead. Beautiful hair and makeup ladies spend many hours making sure to give me a quality look. It's been a lot of work, but it's not natural.

Crave Online: Even with the sex appeal, are you just as tough as the male gladiators?

Phoenix: Oh yeah. Let me tell ya, I thought I was pretty hard-nosed coming in. As Wolf said earlier, we have such a great range of female athleticism on the women's side. Everyone brings something different, cage fighters, we've got some former fitness figure competitors that you would think could play for the Chicago Bears. Like, Siren, you should see her in the Gauntlet. It's incredible. And it's not just athleticism, but it's strength and the body awareness. We get after it. We give justice just as hardcore as the guys do.

Crave Online: What's the most important quality you have to have to be a gladiator?

Phoenix: No matter how much talent you have or how much strategy you have, it's the ability to get the job done and follow through on it. And honestly all the reactions, all the charisma, everything that follows, all the show that comes with it is a natural reaction off of you pursuing what you went for. That's what's key and what you see a lot with our whole team of gladiators is we really go out there giving it our best. The reactions that you see, they're real. We get really involved. We play to win, and you'll see it. Our hearts are so in it. It's built to push the limit. We're getting pushed to the edge of good, but not crazy.

Crave Online: How much time do you spend every day in the gym?

Phoenix: It's been more minimal as we've been into filming just because you're really exerting yourself in those rounds. They might just be a 30-second or minute bout, but it's a really all-out effort. Given that you're often doing multiple events in a day, it's difficult to train hard as far as a regular regimen of lifting weights or doing running because you really want to be fresh and bring your best effort to each day of filming. I think that's only fair to your fellow teammates and the contender you're going against. So we've been maintaining our physiques a lot too though. We're eating good calories. We've had a really good catering service there that has protein, brown rice, a lot of quality food to help us maintain our physiques and our health.

Crave Online: What was your real name before they changed it to Phoenix?

Phoenix: First name's Jennifer, last name's Widerstrom. Here's the thing if you want to get into it. "Widerstrom" is a very strong, beautiful, powerful name and I love it, but it's a mouthful, so I was going to be like shorten it up or change it to have my little stage name that I wasn't sure I liked enough to tell you guys today. I was thinking Jennifer Ryan. Do you guys like it? Are you into it?

Crave Online: Actually, that's more generic. Widerstrom is unique.

Phoenix: We're going to go with Widerstrom for today. I may just be Jennifer Phoenix. Just know I'm Phoenix.