Fearless
Hey guys it is the internet’s resident TNA and EVOLVE fanatic, here to talk about a very different topic than usual. While lately I’ve talked a lot about indy wrestling, New Japan, and Impact but today I’m going to talk about Nikki Bella and female wrestling in general. I became a fan of Nikki Bella in August 2013. From the time I began watching wrestling in late 2008 there were few women who I really cared about, mostly because of the lack of time they received on television. How was I supposed to care about someone when they were on TV once a week for 3 minutes? There was no reason for me to. However that changed when WWE created Total Divas. Many people saw this as a bad thing, thinking that the women should be showcased in the ring and not on some ridiculous reality show. While I didn’t and don’t necessarily disagree with that, I loved the idea of Total Divas. For years these women were on TV weekly for less than 10 minutes, now they would be on TV for an hour every week. While many ‘hardcore wrestling fans’ avoided the show I got into it very quickly. I am in no way a reality show person, you would never catch me watching the Kardashians or anything like that, but I became a big fan of Total Divas. I liked a lot of the girls’ personalities on the show, especially the Bella Twins, and that then made me care about them in the ring. I became very invested in the women’s division in late 2013, rooting for either Natalya, Brie, or Naomi to win the Divas Championship pay-per-view after pay-per-view. Over the past three years I have become a big fan of a large variety of female wrestlers ranging from Naomi to Bayley to Jessicka Havok to Gail Kim. But one thing has remained constant, my love for the Bella Twins.
For a long time Nikki and Brie were looked at as “models” and as people who had no passion for wrestling. However in recent years both of them proved that those things are far from the truth. Brie’s improvement landed her in multiple title matches in late 2013, one of the biggest feuds of the summer in 2014, and tons of other opportunities in the last couple years. Nikki’s continuous improvement over the last few years led to her becoming the longest reigning Divas Champion. I know what some of you are thinking, championship reigns and title matches are storylines and are not necessarily based on the talent of the wrestlers involved but that is not entirely true. Nikki and Brie are not only stars in the wrestling world but mainstream celebrities. WWE would not allow women like them to represent the company in so many ways if they weren’t talented, and the largest wrestling promotion in the world would not have trusted Nikki to hold the Divas Championship for 301 days if she was not able to go in the ring.
In 2014 and 2015 Nikki Bella became the top star of the divas division. She was constantly showing improvement in the ring throughout her chase for the title and her title reign and ended up having some really good matches with Paige and Charlotte. Nikki became one of the most popular talents on the roster male or female and in 2015 did what she had been trying to do for the entirety of her career: she showed the fans that she was not just a pretty face and that she was legitimately talented.
Sadly when Nikki lost the Divas Championship she ended up needing to take time off due to injury. She was working hurt for a lot of her title reign and I, along with many people, thought she would be back in a few months, but that didn’t happen. Nikki was gone for ten whole months. In that time WWE changed a lot about the division. First of all, Brie retired which meant that Nikki, when she returned, would be without Brie for the first time in their WWE careers. They were no longer called divas, they were now called womens wrestlers. The highly criticized butterfly belt was swapped with a very nice new Womens Championship that didn’t look that different from the main title for the men.
Nikki Bella returned at Summerslam to a huge reaction and automatically became one of the top stars of the Smackdown brand. Many people thought that Nikki’s neck injury would be the end of her career, that she wouldn’t ever be able to wrestle again. She went against the odds and came back, complete with a cool new finisher that hopefully won’t hurt her body the way the Rack Attack did. The queen is back to reclaim her throne. She is here, she is fearless, and she will be the first ever Smackdown Womens Champion.
