One of the biggest criticisms among male-dominated sports is that women lose their femininity, but this isn’t the case for the Bella twins, Nicki and Brie, who have broken stereotypes while staying true to their Latino roots. The Bella twins have fought like champions, not just dated them, and they look like real women who are beautiful, athletic, and competitive.
“I think in the past so many girls would try to individually get themselves over and knock every other woman down, and it got the division nowhere. The minute [the women] united is when all of a sudden it exploded,” says Brie to Latina. “To see all the transformations…you feel like you conquered something. It’s empowering.”
“The first time I ever saw women wrestling, I immediately felt connected,” Brie says. “I thought, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.’ ” Though she had never wrestled, she was convinced that this was her calling and persuaded her sister to join her during the 2006 WWE Diva Search. “We showed up and it literally looked like a line of go-go dancers,” Brie recalls.
“I looked at her and was like, ‘What did you get me into?’ ” Nikki growls, sounding as she probably did the day it happened. Although the future wrestlers didn’t make the cut, they had enough potential and were offered a trip to visit Deep South Wrestling in Macon, Ga., to see wrestling up close. “We were only supposed to watch, but literally we got in the ring every day that whole week,” Nikki says. When they got back home, they packed their bags and drove to Florida for a WWE development deal, hoping to make it in this male-dominated world.
Over 10 years later, they’ve managed to stay on top and are the most beloved female villains in the wrestling arena, and they can certainly take a punch. “I love playing bad,” Nikki confesses. “She’s so glam, I’m more granola,” Brie says.
They focus on empowering women and they founded the Bella Army, denouncing bullying, after a spat on social media. “I stuck up for some girls on social media that were getting bullied. I couldn’t believe [the comments] I was seeing. That’s something Brie and I really want to use our voices for,” Nikki says.
The twins are now retired from the ring, but that doesn’t mean they’re done with the public eye. They have a show called Total Bellas, which offers an insight into their families. “Growing up, we were always the feisty Latin girls,” Brie says. So much so that they sought to have it reflected in their WWE personas. “We really wanted our characters to be very Latin-based because we’ve always been so proud of our roots,” Brie says.