Incomparable

by Brie Bella

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  This book is dedicated to our family, thank you for letting us share our story, and to our Bella Army, we wouldn’t be where we are at today without you all.

  INTRODUCTION CUTTING THE PROMO

  2019

  San Diego, California

  Brie

  In wrestling, “cutting a promo” is when you get on the mic and create your backstage storyline—whether victim or heel, good guy or bad, beloved or betrayed. Promos are the basis of every great in-ring rivalry, of every highly tuned moment of drama on the mat. It’s your chance to make the audience care so that when you step out onto the ramp, you’re met with boos or cheers (both equally good, as far as ratings go). Promos are, for the most part, pure fabrication—a device of writers and producers who know how to craft compelling characters, who know how to make good TV.

  Because we are twins, they didn’t have to use a lot of imagination when they launched us on the main roster. We are identical, so their strategy was to treat us like the same person. They made it about our twindom, not us individually—they made us dress identically, wear our hair identically, move in the ring identically, achieve an identical body composition. This is common in twin culture. In the baby and toddler years, you see it as identical dressing—almost an inability to treat twins differently, to introduce any individuality at all. It’s a version of treating everyone the same until they have a chance to express who they are on their own.

  When you get older, the cracks in the twindom begin to show. You enter the age of comparison, which lasts your whole life: Which one of you is skinnier, which is smarter, which is better at soccer? Knowing the comparison is coming—that your benchmark is the woman who shared a womb with you, who is sitting next to you—means that you learn how to compete often and easily. We accepted that it was a hallmark of life. The problem is that the very act of comparison typically requires that someone be “better.” Someone needs to win.

  Nicole

  In many ways, being a twin is like competing against yourself. It’s this weird ground where you want to distinguish yourself, you want to win, but it is entwined with love. You don’t want the fact that you have won to mean that the person you love the most has lost. I beat my sister at soccer, but only because she was so much better at ballet. She was a better artist, I was better at drama. When you’re an identical twin, you start to see your potential as a million possibilities—you see in your twin a different outcome from the same egg, not for better or worse. It was easy to then project how we were onto the other girls, to understand that we all have gifts, that some of our qualities can be over-expressed, or not expressed at all. That the worst thing we can do is shut each other down.

  It became apparent to both of us that it was all about trade-offs. It was about not having or being everything at the same time, and that the gifts of others are not threats. We came to the understanding that there will always be plenty of beer at the party for everyone. We live in a world of abundance—we just have to choose to see it that way. Your nice house doesn’t mean I can’t have a nice house, too. The fact that someone else gets something that you want doesn’t mean that you won’t get it a different time, or that something equally wonderful won’t come along that you might want more. As women, we too often feel threatened by other women. We should celebrate what they achieve as a testament of what we can achieve, too.

  Comparison of and between women is rampant in our culture, and with that comes this idea and fear of scarcity—that there isn’t enough opportunity to go around.

  And historically there certainly hasn’t been. We witness it firsthand in WWE, where the men far outnumber the women on the roster. But we also see that this reality is shifting. As we along with the other Divas-turned-Superstars have brought more awareness to women’s wrestling—through our TV shows, through cutting great promos, and through pure athletic acrobatics and sport—we have brought more young girls and women into the audience. They want to see more of us, and the makeup of the roster is beginning to shift in response. Wrestling is different from other sports in that it is a competition, yes, but it is also a collaboration. We rely on each other to pull off our matches. We rely on each other to make the spectacle look good, to put on a great show. In many ways, we are the perfect illustration of how women helping women only creates more opportunities for all of us—not the other way around. We watched as multiple women experienced success at the very same time. This is not a strange concept to men, but it is certainly not standard thinking for women across the board. We often work at places where there might only be one female executive at a company. We hope that we are part of a cultural movement that helps to change that—where young girls grow up believing that they can do anything, without also having to believe that they’re going to have to break down walls to do it.

  Brie

  Being part of this movement is a great privilege—and a great responsibility. And that’s one of the reasons that Nicole and I felt like it was so important to tell our whole story, from the beginning. It has had incredible bright spots—we both have comfortable lives and incredible careers in WWE that are hopefully not close to being over yet. I have an amazing husband, Bryan, and my daughter, Birdie. If I’m lucky, I’ll have another kid; I have every confidence that Nicole is going to be a mother down the road, too. But it has not been easy to get here. Ours is certainly not the worst story you’ll ever read in terms of adversity—there are people who have risen from far more terrible circumstances. But it was very rough at times and punctuated with loss and pain, which forced us to a point of real strength. After all, something has to shine the diamond.

  Nicole

  The tendency to play the victim card is strong in our culture, particularly for women. I absolutely understand why—I think it goes back to feeling compared. A shitty childhood, or bad circumstances along the way, is one way to distinguish yourself or justify why what might have been never came to be. I get it. The pull to go there is strong because it’s a built-in excuse—and it can also seem like a reason. I feel very fortunate that my life didn’t go to a dark place, that Brie and I found the inner strength to fight against a dimmer destiny. We are strong, yes, but I also credit my grandfather, Pop Pop, for making sure that it didn’t happen. I think he knew that Brie and I were right on the line of a different sort of life and he stepped in as much as he could. He made us realize that our futures could be brighter than a childhood of abuse might suggest.

  And so, at a young age, Brie and I decided we did not want to be victims. Instead, we wanted to be survivors, the heroes of our own stories, to take control and responsibility for our lives. It’s a fine line and hard to do—acknowledging that you have been a victim, that you have been wronged, but at the same time not letting the victimhood continue to take your life hostage. Otherwise the original crimes and original hurts just end up taking your entire life away—and we thought we had already given up enough.

  Everyone has sad stories and happy stories. Unfortunately, pain is a permanent part of life, no matter how much money, or privilege, or opportunity you might have. You can’t escape pain. It’s the darkness contrasting all that is wonderful and bright, it’s what gives life texture. So we made an unconscious decision when we were younger to process the pain as best as we were able, and the
n to spend the rest of our lives showing the world how strong we truly are. I think we were able to do this, in part, because we were able to draw strength and resiliency from each other, because we weren’t necessarily feeling low at the exact same times. It’s like those couples who say that they never got divorced because they never wanted to get divorced at the same time. We decided not to use our pain to justify falling behind—instead, we decided to use our pain to make a difference, dragging each other forward.

  Brie

  It was hard to not be envious of the kids who had it easier growing up—who had more stable parents, whose homes weren’t broken. But hardship has its upsides, too—in some ways, it’s a great and motivating opportunity. It gives you something to press off as you hunt for something different. It makes it easy to determine exactly what you don’t want to re-create. We knew we wanted something better. And we knew if that was going to happen, it was within our power to make it so.

  The following pages are not promo cutting, they are reality. And while some of the storylines in the ring have not been “true,” this overall through line is: We are the heroes of our own story, and our story is our own to make. While we experienced some of our stories together, a lot of it happened to us individually, and we had to go it alone—even though we are identical twins, our stories are incomparable. And your story will be incomparable, too.

  CHAPTER 1 TWIN MAGIC

  2002-2008

  San Diego, California

  Los Angeles, California

  McDonough, Georgia

  Tampa, Florida

  Nicole

  I made my SmackDown debut on August 29, 2008, sitting in the dark, under the ring. I had snuck in during a commercial break, when all audience eyes were trained on suspended screens up high—I wore a black hooded sweatshirt pulled tight over my face. I walked into the arena in the darkness with the WWE stage managers who were transitioning the ring to the next match. Nobody noticed when I rolled below.

  There was a monitor down there, so I could watch as my identical twin sister, Brie, walked the ramp to the ring. We had used all our own money—and we really didn’t have any at the time—to make wrestling gear for our debut. The outfits were fine—red, basic, totally PG and unthreatening. But the veterans, in a classic hazing move, wouldn’t let us wear them—because “red” was another wrestler’s color. It sounds weird because WWE is such a big production you’d think they’d orchestrate every moment and choreograph the backstage, too. But in many ways they run it like a mom-and-pop operation and let wrestlers work it out themselves. At that time in particular, the veterans had all the power in the locker room. Those sorts of mind games were just part of the backstage experience, especially for the women.There was really nothing we could do but bite our lips and then hustle to come up with something else. You make and pay for your own gear in WWE, with no oversight or input from management—there’s no costume closet or official wardrobe department. So we dug through our gym bags to find something that would work, which is how we ended up in black workout pants we had worn to the gym earlier that day, spray painted with glitter at the hems, and silver tankinis (the seamstresses helped us cut up some bathing suits we found in our luggage and then stitch them to our pants). Not exactly the first impression we were hoping to make, but the only thing we could come up with in a few short and panicked hours in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We changed in the arena bathroom, because the veterans wouldn’t let us change in the locker room. We were semi–main event, which means we were right before the main show. The appetizer.

  Brie was wrestling Victoria, a talented longtime WWE veteran and former Women’s Champion. She was known for her red hair and a Widow’s Peak finishing move that was a neck-breaker. (Essentially, she would hoist you up, back-to-back, before dropping to her knees. It hurts.) As the two went after each other, Brie held her own with some old-school snaps and a flying snapmare before Victoria started screaming “Welcome to SmackDown, Brie” and “Not tonight, sweetheart.” She was in Brie’s face and dominating her with a lot of hair-pulling and a standing moonsault (essentially a backflip into a body slam). Below deck in the dark, I adjusted my costume, hair, and makeup to match Brie as she became more and more disheveled and out of breath. Ninety seconds in, a panting Brie crawled in to join me, while the crowd screamed: “Get back in the ring! Get back in the ring!” And then, in our first ever “Twin Magic” maneuver, Victoria grabbed me by the legs and pulled me out, tossing me back up. I pretended to be exhausted as she grabbed me by the hair, and then I flipped her over and pinned her for a three count.

  So, while Brie was the first to walk the SmackDown ramp, I was the first to win a SmackDown match. I cemented my victory with a really cringe-y dance, where I jumped up and down like an overexcited contestant on The Price Is Right, rocked my hips back and forth, and flipped my hair. (The bump and grind wouldn’t be perfected for a few years.)

  Brie

  When my entrance music hit—a classic called “Feel Your Body,” from the WWE music vault—I thought I might vomit. I was so scared my vision went blurry. The arena probably had close to seventeen thousand people in it, which is staggering when you’re used to wrestling in church parking lots and JCCs for a few dozen die-hard fans. I didn’t have a vignette or anything, because I had never been on TV before. So they announced my name and I walked out to silence. They probably assumed I was a local, because WWE will do that occasionally. (The locals they tap are actually indie wrestlers, so they’re experienced in the ring and won’t hurt themselves, but they’ll let them have a match, where they typically get destroyed.) Randomly, Freddie Prinze Jr. was the writer who was working with me at WWE and he was a fount of positivity—he was so encouraging and just kept telling me, “You got this,” on repeat, until I could say it back to him. In his non-acting life, Freddie is a crazy wrestling fan—working with him on our debut just made the whole thing even more surreal.

  Fortunately, my adrenaline took over and put me on some sort of autopilot—kind of like what I would guess an out-of-body experience would feel like. I walked down the ramp and rolled into the ring. I don’t remember much of that first match except that Victoria was awesome to work with. I felt terrible that she had to put me over and let me win, because that sucks for a veteran—but she told me not to worry. Throughout the match, she really helped me out, and kept talking into my ear about what to do next: “Slow down … not yet … I’ll tell you when.” In recounting it, it sounds an awful lot like sex.

  We were some of the first women ever to debut on the main stage as wrestlers, rather than as valets, managers, or love interests for the men. This was one of the reasons that the neck hairs of the other women in the locker room were up. The only downside of skipping straight to the fighting, and I’m not complaining here, is that when you valet, which is essentially escorting wrestlers to the mat and then working up the crowd by taunting the rival valets, you have time to get a storyline going that the crowds care about. You can draw attention and interest in a no-pressure way—you are just icing on the cake, circling the ring. Because we got to skip those steps, and in the process might be helping to set a new precedent for the women coming up behind us, we felt a lot of extra pressure to do well out there.

  The audience reaction was pretty great considering we were total newcomers, and my identity as an identical twin was a secret (we wouldn’t be “outed” for several months after Victoria grew suspicious in a promo backstage when I asked the seamstresses to make me two dresses … just in case). You want the crowd to clap, or you even want them to boo—boredom is the worst fate for any wrestler. The minute they lose interest and start checking their text messages or decide it’s a good time to go to the bathroom, you’re done. Because women’s matches are so much shorter than the men’s, typically only two minutes during TV events, you don’t have time to get their attention again to show them what you can do. So my intent was pretty simple: I wanted to be memorable, to pique the crowd’s interest, and to show them that despi
te the fact that I was a small girl, I could still fight.

  While we had the luxury of making our debut before social media was a part of daily life—and the trolling that often comes with it—we did get indications that the fans were into us. We trended #1 on Yahoo! for two days straight after our debut, which was the biggest barometer of popularity at the time. So we stayed on the main roster and weren’t sent back down to FCW, WWE’s developmental promotion at the time. Our debut was good enough that it made a lot of trouble for us with the other girls backstage. It was rough—like the worst kind of sorority—but we got it. You have to be able to earn your stripes as a wrestler, to know what’s worth fighting about. We learned that you don’t get to change in the locker room your first day out. Or your fiftieth. There are ever-changing rules about what you can wear and what moves you can do—essentially, anything perceived as someone else’s signature is off-limits. It was cutthroat, and they hated us. There was a lot of bullshit, but we had decided to stick—and so we did exactly that, with smiles on our faces. When they realized that we weren’t going anywhere, they started to leave us alone (more on all of that later).

  After our match, we celebrated in Gorilla—the area between backstage and the ramp where you wait before you go out—with Victoria, Freddie, and Vince McMahon. It was a great moment, and everyone was really happy for us. Then we booked it to the Hyatt across the street for celebratory drinks. Because hot damn, Nicole and I had just made our debut on WWE TV.

  Nicole