Incomparable
Page 3
Nicole
It was pretty brutal, but it was also love-at-first-bump for us. We just knew that we were meant to do this, so the bullshit from the other girls didn’t really bother us. We had big smiles and lots of energy, which probably only added fuel to the fire. But that’s how we operated—heads up, eyes on the prize, plenty of beer at the party for everyone. It always felt easier to show no resistance and let the girls talk shit and walk all over us, than to fight the locker room fights. We saved our energy for the ring.
And we had each other, which was huge. When the girls at Deep South wouldn’t teach us much, we just tried to teach each other based on what we saw in the ring. The thing about wrestling is that when you don’t know what you’re doing, it hurts—those hits and falls are real, and when you haven’t been trained to lessen the blow, shield your body, or fake contact, you feel it everywhere. That first night in Georgia we broke the motel room’s TV and a console drawer practicing our holds. We made it look kind of right and hoped nobody would notice. The second night, we spread ice across the bed and just lay down on it. We were so sore we couldn’t move.
We learned a lot in those three days about how things work. There’s really no rhyme or reason to who gets signed or who doesn’t, you have to just let it ride. We also learned about how you need to operate outside the ring. One of the guys down there wanted to talk about the show and work us into a gimmick, and he stopped by our hotel room one night to talk it through. So naïve, we didn’t foresee that everyone couldn’t stop talking about the fact that a guy was in our room, convinced that we had staged some sort of kinky threesome. We also had our first taste of kayfabe, which in wrestling is maintaining your in-ring persona outside of the ring, whenever wrestling fans are around.
Before social media, WWE was all about kayfabe: If you were a babyface in the ring, you were a babyface outside the ring; if you were a heel, you would act like a heel in public. We went to a café with some of the girls down in Deep South, and we were all in line to order food when some fans approached. Two girls had a match that weekend: They said “kayfabe” under their breath, separated, and started to give each other dirty looks. It was bizarre at times, but it was so fun!
The goal at Deep South was to get a contract. There were WWE scouts on the ground, and trainers were filming with handheld camcorders looking for talent who could move well and who might be able to hold main stage attention. At the end of our three-day trial, they told us they were interested in having us come back and train for real. (Side note: The restaurant we all ate at for a last night celebration was Hooters, proving that all roads do lead home.)
Brie
We went back up to San Diego to talk to our family about what we were thinking. Particularly our grandfather, Pop Pop, who was the primary father figure in our lives. When we told him we wanted to become pro wrestlers and needed his blessing, he objected passionately. He wanted us to get married to nice guys and have babies, which was certainly a more assured future. He wanted to know we would be safe, tended to, protected. He always gave us good advice, and his voice was one of the only ones that actually mattered to us. So we talked a lot about how to convince him that this wouldn’t be a waste of time. His knowledge of WWE was also limited to the Attitude Era, and so we understood why he wouldn’t want his precious granddaughters doing bra-and-panty matches. If he had been alive to see us flourish, he would have loved it—and he would have laughed so hard.
Our grandfather passed away shortly after, on November 28, which was devastating for our entire family. We told WWE we needed time to be with our family. In that time off, they decided to shut down Deep South and began opening a new program in Tampa called FCW. They were investing in a new facility and building out a program. They offered us $500 a week and we took it gladly. When the program opened, we moved to Florida.
Craig and I had been together for two years, and we both thought we would be together forever. He was both hurt and shocked when I told him I was taking a job as a professional wrestler and moving to Florida. I felt like there was no way forward except through Tampa. If I didn’t give wrestling a valid shot, I would always regret it, and so he begrudgingly helped me pack and promised to come visit. I clicked with him, but it seems I had clicked with wrestling even more. It was the first thing that I had felt passionate about in a long time, and I needed to see it through. Our relationship wasn’t dramatic and we had endured distance before, so I felt like I could put it on ice while I went on this epic adventure.
Nicole
My boyfriend was less understanding than Craig, and completely flipped out about the idea of me working around men who were dressed in little more than underwear. It was silly. I’m not a cheater, and I certainly know how to handle myself around guys, even those who are scantily clad—but he was consumed with jealousy. There was no way I was not going, though—in fact, the more someone tells me no, the more my response is “Screw you.” Our relationship lasted only a few more short and horrible months.
Brie and I wanted to make an adventure out of the drive, so we sold off one of our cars for cash and packed up the more reliable Malibu with all of our possessions. We plotted out a road trip. It took us through San Antonio to see our aunt Toni and uncle Tom (and a massive rainstorm that I thought might wash the car off the road). From there, we headed to Mobile, Alabama. We were tired and hungry, and so we went downtown for burgers and beer, which seemed like an absolutely normal thing to do. We headed into the first spot we could find and grabbed seats at a four-top. And there we sat. Nobody came over to take our order. The joint was full of bikers, who were all staring—naturally, we assumed this was because we were hot, tan twins. Finally, two bikers walked over and kicked out the other two chairs at our table, leaning over to say: “Your kind is not welcome here.” Surprised, we responded, “Cali girls?” Their response: “No, Mexicans.” We were blown away. We didn’t want to get into a fistfight, so we got up to leave. On our way out we asked the band to play “California Girls” by the Beach Boys. No clue if they obliged, because we got the fuck out of there. At the end of the block there was a jazz club with a very different clientele. We poked our heads in and asked if we could come in. We were welcomed, openly and warmly. We stayed there until late that night drinking and laughing with the locals. It would appear that there are two sides of Mobile, Alabama.
Brie
While that night ended well, it was the first time that Nikki and I had ever experienced overt racism. Both California and Arizona are melting pots, and we were certainly not the only girls around who came from an ambiguous mixture of races and cultures (we’ve since done genetic reports that confirmed we are part Mexican, Italian, Native American, British, etc.). The South was a new sort of reality. Even northern Florida, surprisingly enough. In our time at FCW, we once wrestled at a boys and girls club where people in the crowds yelled, “Spic! Spic! Spic!” There were far too many Confederate flags around town for us to feel comfortable.
While the racism was deeply fucked up, it put some of the locker room bullshit into proper perspective. While we didn’t have it in us to try to win over the hearts and minds of the KKK, we did feel strong enough to endure some hate from the other female wrestlers. And we understood their frustration. There had been wrestlers on the indie market for years trying to get into the developmental program, and we had cut the line. We didn’t come from wrestling royalty, and we hadn’t put in years wrestling abroad in the independents. But we felt strongly that even though roster sizes seem limited, our success was not an impediment to anyone else making it. The WWE is very fluid, where you can go up and down from developmental to the main roster overnight. Vince McMahon let us all be the creators of our own destiny. The fact that anyone was there meant they had a shot, too, and we weren’t going to take that from them. Honestly, it felt like if there had been less attention spent on trying to pull each other off the top turnbuckle, more of us would have made it up there.
Nicole
WWE’s plan was
to build out part of a canned food factory into a full-fledged FCW center. This has since happened, and it’s spectacular. But its origins were far more humble. We helped put up the first two rings in there, which is wild—and those rings shared space with the canned foods. In fact, the cans became our favorite props when they taught us how to cut promos. They were all staged in either a grocery store, a gas station, or an airline thanks to the backdrop. It was also swelteringly hot and humid, as it is inclined to be in Florida in the summer. There was no AC, and while we’d roll the garage doors up to try to get some sort of cross-breeze going, we baked in there. We would change the mats four times a day because they would get so slick with sweat. It was really nasty. So nasty that Brie and I got ringworm on our cheeks. We never figured out which wrestler infected everyone else, but it’s almost surprising that we didn’t come down with worse. It was a swamp of wrestling sweat.
When we arrived, the canned food factory wasn’t yet a reality and so they had two rings set up at a batting cage frequented by all the local Little Leaguers. It didn’t dampen how amazing the scene was. We acted like rabid WWE fans, jaws on the floor, when we first walked in. We had never seen advanced wrestling live before, and we bought every bump they threw. Steve Kern, one of the coaches, turned to the other coach, Dr. Tom Prichard, and said: “Tom, I think they think this is real.”
They put us right into the fire and asked the other girls to go at us hard and throw us around until we learned how to take the hits and fall right. The girls certainly obliged. We learned how to tuck our chins and land in certain ways to lessen the impact—when you don’t know what you’re doing, you feel all of it, and it kills. But we loved it. Because we knew we were really green and had so much to learn, we attended night classes to try to get better. Tom gave us a lot of extra attention because we were so eager. It’s funny, because he is such a big, manly wrestler, but he’s the one who came up with the backflip into the ring and the Bella booty shake. Who would have guessed? I picked our entrance music, though—“I’mma Shine,” by Youngbloodz—not realizing that the lyrics were about strippers. I thought they were so uplifting! I was thinking, “I’m going to shine out there!”
All in, we were wrestling for eight to ten hours a day. We’d take a short break before night school to nap. We’d get up early in the morning to power walk with bands and Saran Wrap tight around our waists before wrestling (don’t ask, not a good idea, but we thought it would help us shed water weight fast). Other than that it was eating, wrestling, and sleeping. We were intent on making it: Physical storytelling—using our bodies to portray fear, anger, pain, triumph—felt like what we had always been meant to do.
About two months in, we had our first match. Brie and I took on Krissy Vaine and Nattie, and we beat them. Or, to be more precise, they put us over. The thing about developmental is that the matches are amazing. For one, everyone is trying to get to the main roster, and you can feel that desire in the way all the women fight. But more important, we weren’t limited by time the way you are in live and TV events, when women typically only get about two minutes per match at the time. There also weren’t expectations that we’d pull each other’s hair—spectacles that are still part of main stage fights. Instead, it was pretty straightforward wrestling. But instead of performing in front of arena crowds, we went at each other in church parking lots and high school auditoriums where there might be a dozen people in the stands.
All in, we spent fourteen months in developmental, and I’m grateful for every minute that we had. Getting to the main stage is all about timing. Some girls moved up in two months because the WWE creative team felt like a male wrestler needed a valet or manager and wanted a specific look. But we were happy to stick around at FCW for as long as they would have us and really learn how to wrestle. Once you’re on the main roster and on the road all week, you don’t really get a chance to train. Instead, you learn through matches, and those matches are short.
The other upside of staying in developmental is that there wasn’t TV time down there yet (now it’s a massive production), and so we got to stay under the radar. There was also no social media, so there was no pressure to build a massive following. At best, you would make fliers and pass them out for shows. We didn’t even have Facebook profiles. Nobody had any idea that there were twins down in developmental. Wild to think about now.
While we both would have loved to assume we could make it to the main roster on our own as solo performers, our pull was in our twindom, as had been the case throughout our lives. More specifically, our power source was the fact that we were identical. Kind of. When we started at FCW, Brie weighed 117 pounds—she was essentially like a baby deer and looked like she could be snapped in two when she was up against some of the stronger women. I hadn’t weighed 117 pounds in more than a decade, partly because my boyfriend liked me as thick as possible. (And I loved that.)
We were both put on diets—let’s just say that Brie’s was more fun than mine—until we looked more alike than we had in years. That is, we looked alike until my nose was flattened into my face. At that point, WWE had already put the gears in motion to bring us up to the main roster, so they went back to the drawing board. They came up with the idea of “Twin Magic”—i.e., keeping me under the stage until the end of Brie’s matches so I could come out refreshed and win. While I’ve never been inclined to hang back, the chance to debut as wrestlers, rather than on the arm of one of the dudes, wasn’t something I was going to turn down. Plus, as the older sister by sixteen minutes, I thought it might be time to let Brie go first.
CHAPTER 2 LEARNING TO FIGHT
Nicole
Legend has it that I drop-kicked Brie into my mom’s rib cage so I could make my grand entrance a full sixteen minutes before her. But I think Brie hung back on purpose—she’s always been more of a homebody, more reserved—to let me test the waters.
My parents met when they were in high school—after my dad had already managed to father a kid at sixteen (he didn’t find out about our sibling until after we were born). He’s Mexican and dashing, and he also came from a really messed-up background. My mom was completely in love with him, which was at odds with her parents, who were strict and Catholic. It was a potent combination, and a story as old as time. Brie and I came blasting into the world when my mom was just nineteen, her freshman year at the University of San Diego. When my mom left for college, my dad, who didn’t go to school, followed her and took a job as a busser at a restaurant called Milton’s off Del Mar Heights (it’s still there). We were born on November 21, a full month early. If I had to guess, I’d say we were conceived on Valentine’s Day.
Because of my mother’s “state,” my grandparents felt it best that she leave college and take up residence in a girls’ home in Mission Hills. There she would have the company and communion of other girls in similar straits. Hopefully, they’d be protected from the judgment and gossip of their Catholic peers. The health care she received during her pregnancy was really basic. Her insurance didn’t cover ultrasounds, so the doctor just listened for a heartbeat during checkups. She was massive—really huge—but the doctor never thought to listen for a second baby. He just assumed she was having a very healthy boy.
My mom wasn’t allowed to have much contact with my dad when she was at the home. Visits were only allowed occasionally, so they wrote each other a lot of love letters. My mom doesn’t talk about it much, but I’m guessing it was really romantic—the forced separation, my mom in dire straits, this incoming family that they would need to provide for—and my grandfather was insistent that my mom not marry my dad under duress. He wanted to be sure that it would be a choice of love and something that my mom really wanted, not something she was forced into just because they had a kid. My grandfather knew a bit about my dad’s background—my dad is the sort of person who is always preceded by his reputation—and so my grandfather had always been compassionately wary of him. When my dad was expelled from high school for fighting, my grandfather had st
epped in and advocated on my dad’s behalf, arguing that he was a troubled boy who needed the structure of a place to go and the backbone of an education. They took my dad back in. So he cared, but he might not have cared to have him as a son-in-law necessarily.
When my mom went into labor, I came out at 5 pounds. They cut the umbilical cord, not realizing that Brie was still up there, breeched in my mom’s ribs, which immediately put her life in peril. It was many, many minutes later that a very wise nurse realized there was another heartbeat and in a panic instructed my mom to push. “Nope, I’m not pushing” was her response, which is so our mother. She can be mad stubborn. Brie came out at 4.8 pounds, not breathing, because without the umbilical cord, she hadn’t been getting any oxygen.