The Bella Twins: Total Divas Showed Vince McMahon That Fans Wanted To See Women's Wrestling In WWE
The Bellas wanted to show women's wrestling to the world
Dec 24, 2021
The Bella Twins have recalled how the success of Total Divas led to Vince McMahon giving female wrestlers more TV time, because fans were coming to WWE shows to see them in action.
Nikki and Brie Bella initially left WWE in 2012 but returned in March 2013, with their comeback coinciding with the production and premiere of 'Total Divas' on E! in July 2013.
Nikki and Brie have now opened up on how the were able to exploit the success of the show in order to bring around more opportunities for female wrestlers in WWE.
Speaking on Freddie Prinze Jr's Wrestling With Freddie Podcast, Nikki said: "We had 11 months off before we came back with Total Divas. During that time, it was hard, but we got a lot of calls from the girls who were like, 'you guys seem really happy. I want to take the step you did. I'm not going to re-sign.' It was some top women reaching out to us. We were like, 'Look, we miss it every week, but something has to change.'
"That's when we got the call for Total Divas. We had talked about it for two weeks. 'Do we want to put our personal lives out there? We're pretty wild, I don't know.' I had just started dating John [Cena] and no one knew and I wasn't sure I wanted that out there. We had so much to talk about.
"What really got us was, 'we can show the world women's wrestling,' because that's the core of the show. That's what ended up making us call them back and say 'we're so in and we're going to give it our all.'"
Brie then explained how the success of the show led to a change in McMahon's mindset.
Brie added: "Vince is about putting asses in seats. He cares about money. The one thing Total Divas did was it showed Vince that people were coming to the shows to see women. It was more than just men. It started being young girls and women buying tickets just to see the Total Divas.
"That's when Vince was like, 'we have to give them more time because people are actually coming to see them.'"
H/T Fightful
