Nikki Bella making her way to Florida weekly to get in-ring reps in.
For the first time since the 2022 women’s Royal Rumble match, Nikki Bella stepped back into the ring for WWE for the 2025 installment of the Rumble.
She was in the match for three minutes before being eliminated by Nia Jax. In preparation for her return, Bella went to Florida to train with Natalya and T.J. Wilson at The Dungeon.
On the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Natalya revealed that Bella has continued to come to The Dungeon weekly. She would love for Bella to come back to WWE on a more regular basis so they can team up.
Yes, Nikki (Bella) actually has been coming and training with me privately. So she flies in every week and she’s been coming and working with me and I will tell you that she hasn’t lost it. She has so much passion for this and it’s funny because I saw her last week. She came to Tampa. I said to her, I’m like, ‘This is so funny because we started our careers together in the very same week.’ Nikki and I and Brie (Bella), and so, we started together in the same week in developmental in WWE and I remember when all three of us had nothing. All three of us were hired at the very base amount of pay and it was never, ever about the money. It was always about the work, the passion, and so, we were just laughing and sharing old stories about — I didn’t have enough money to buy wrestling gear so The Bella Twins, they were giving me their clothes. Because when you just get started, you’re just kind of — literally just getting started. I went to Florida with this one suitcase because I was like, I gotta get down to Florida, I’ll just leave everything behind. I’ll get back to Calgary and I never went back to live because my whole life with WWE has been kind of stateside as far as living but, I didn’t have money for a lot of the things that we need to look like superstars so The Bella Twins, they were giving me their clothes, they were giving me stuff to look nice and I was taking certain things that they had and I was cutting them up and gluing my own sequins on them and trying to make it — I look back on that now, I’m like, ‘Nattie, you look like sh*t.’ Pardon my language. But I was like, ‘I wouldn’t have hired you looking like that because you look horrible.’ But you do what you have to do and I just remember those early years with the twins and so, being able to help Nikki prepare for Royal Rumble and of course, I would love to see Nikki back. I’m looking for a tag team partner and of course, I’d love to have Nikki as my partner but, I just love her and I love Brie so much and they just have so much passion and so, seeing what Nikki’s doing in the ring and doing in our dungeon. I mean, our dungeon is really like a dungeon. We try to make it as much like the original dungeon that my grandfather started in Calgary. There’s no air conditioning, it’s in Florida. It’s a room big enough to put a ring in and there’s one bathroom and there’s some fans and there’s a lot of stray cats that my husband and I feed.
Natalya was in tag team action on the 4/11 Friday Night SmackDown. There was a Gauntlet match to determine who would challenge Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships. Natalya’s partner was Maxinne Dupri.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
