As crazy as it may sound, it has officially been over five years since fans saw The Bella Twins, now known as Brie and Nikki Garcia, share the ring together.
True pioneers of female professional wrestling within the WWE and beyond, the Bellas were innovators, using their offscreen efforts to fuel on-screen interest and working as a tag team in a division that didn't yet have titles to acknowledge their success. Even now, young performers will cite them as inspirations for becoming professional wrestlers, and as the industry inches further and further away from being television-specific, their broad portfolios have proven a template for other stars looking to brand out.
And yet, just because the Bellas look like one of the most influential acts of the last two decades of professional wrestling doesn't mean they are looking to simply sit back and talk about the good old days; no, in an interview on the podcast Not Skinny But Not Fat, Nikki and Brie let it be known once more that they want to get get back in the ring in the not-too-distant future in order remind fans why they are all about.
“Especially because my husband’s at AEW, but I’m still surrounded a lot by wrestling because he and I, we talk about it all the time,” Brie Garcia said via 411 Mania. “He’s fully in it, and he just had an incredible match this Sunday at their big pay-per-view, All Out. I watch everything, and when I see the women wrestle and all that, I always am like, ‘Ah!'”
“We want one last run,” Nikki Garcia added. “Especially when our sons are a little older and they could sit and watch their mommies kick a** and if my surgeon allows me to.”
Would Bryan Danielson's daughter be okay with her mom getting back into the ring when she is so apprehensive about her father wrestling that she requested he retire in 2024? That is certainly a question worth asking, but then again, who knows, maybe seeing her mom in the ring could inspire a love of wrestling that allows the entire family to remain in the industry moving forward, an outcome that would be very good news for “American Dragon” fans the world over.
The Bellas dish on losing their famous name when they left WWE.
Elsewhere in their interview on Not Skinny But Not Fat, Brie and Nikki Garcia were asked about the Bella name and why they aren't allowed to use it anymore.
Though some WWE talents have taken their names outside of the company, as you'll seldom see the name Dwayne Johnson without “The Rock” sandwiched in between, for the Garcias, no such option was even presented, even if they would have at least appreciated a conversation on the matter.
“I think it’s different for men than women (when it comes to keeping names that the company owns). You know, so, there was never even a conversation. I think a lot of us actually, we thought, oh, maybe there will be a conversation because we have such a huge brand and we were actually making WWE a lot of money. So we actually thought there was gonna be a conversation of like, okay, if you guys aren’t re-signing, let’s talk about the name. Maybe when you do future projects, we take a percentage, you keep the name,” Nikki Garcia said via Post Wrestling.
“I’ll be honest, I got a lawyer letter four hours before my contract was ending. They were ceasing it all. So, and I keep that letter in my office so I could always see it and just know that as I enter this new chapter, I get to see what wasn’t even talked about of something I built for 20 years, but know that I have the power as a woman to build something else for the next 20 years… And it was upsetting because we were attached but also, I get it… business. Like, hey, this is our platform and I get it. I’m very understanding in that way, of, that is their IP. But, we would have continued to build that if there was a talk.”
Does it stink for The Bellas to lose the ‘Bellas' name? You bet, but then again, it's not like WWE was going to let them use it in AEW, and they may have created other obstacles that would have affected opportunities in the future, too; better for the Garcias to simply cut bait now and go all-in on something new than remain tied to a former employer unnecessarily.
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