Nikki Bella has recently announced her retirement from wrestling. She first mentioned her retirement on the season finale of her reality show, Total Bellas. From that announcement, she went into further details on her health reasons causing her retirement on The Tonight Show featuring Jimmy Fallon.
Since then she and her sister Brie Bella continue to talk about their careers on their podcast. Recently Nikki comments on The Bellas Podcast about not receiving a retirement speech and why she feels it has not happened.
“I feel like they haven’t had me come in and do a retirement speech because – guys, it’s crazy. Brie and I have become hated by the ‘Smart Marks’,” Nikki explained.
She continues, “I always looked at it like, we did a really good job as heels for so long. But it was like the more successful we would get with the reality shows, and the men that we were dating and married to, and all that, we became more and more hated. For people to go against us in the ring and on the mic, it’s very easy to create promos with Brie and I, or about us. And I look at Paige, and Bryan, and Edge, and the list goes on of people who got to have that moment [of a retirement speech].”
From this discussion, Nikki started to get emotional. From the amount of time, she spent growing in her career and working hard she feels a lack of respect. She continues:
“It’s actually going to make me emotional. It’s going to make me cry because, you know, I love wrestling. I gave thirteen years of my life. I beat my body up. I mean, it was my world. It’s so sad sometimes when I see the lack of respect or, like, not the appreciation. You know how badly I wish I could go out there and wrestle again, and do it for the fans, and do it for us?
I mean, I’ve risked my life. And you know what? I’m a human being; sometimes we like to be acknowledged or appreciated. And the fact that I gave so much and I will never get to stand in that ring and have the ‘thank you, Nikki’ chant, or even give my last, final words – I found out the Thursday before WrestleMania and I’m done. That’s it.”
It was mentioned earlier in the week that The Bellas were planning a comeback feud with The IIconics for the Women’s Tag Team Championship. These belts would have been perfect for the twins who have worked side by side for the majority of their WWE careers. Unfortunately for Nikki, it isn’t going to be a reality.
Brie gave a much different approach to Nikki’s comments about the negativity from fans about them. She comforted her sister by explaining that out of the 100% of fans out there, only 5% are the negative ones. This leaves 95% of those that will say “thank you, Nikki.”
Brie says the following about her concerns with the negativity from the “trolls” or “smart marks.”
“I don’t need to be appreciated by them. And I’ll tell you why they’re a small part of the huge WWE Universe.”
Although Brie has previously had a slight retirement moment at WrestleMania 32 prior to starting a family, she isn’t ruling out a return.
“The door is closed for Nicole in wrestling; maybe not for me,” Brie said. “I’m not going to confirm anything but maybe or maybe not. [Teaming with Daniel Bryan against Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch] would be good, but I think too, if I do go back, I would like to do something a little different. Something I’ve never done before. Obviously with my husband, but he and I talk about certain ideas.”
Credit to Wrestling Inc. for the transcript of the podcast.
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