Incomparable

by Brie Bella

  Maybe it was Bear, but I always felt protected, even though I arguably did some dubious stuff (like going to random French guys’ apartments in the East Village). I just pray that Birdie uses better judgment. But I also, admittedly, knew how to protect myself and would have quickly let my fists fly if I ever felt like I had gotten myself into a bad situation. And New York certainly taught me how to use my voice. I had always been tough, but more in a physical sense—living in New York gave me a verbal backbone and the confidence to speak my mind.

  Nicole

  I got the WWE nickname “Fearless Nikki” because I took on a series of handicap matches after Brie “quit” to eventually go into a storyline with Stephanie. To feed it, Stephanie kept putting me in the ring against four or so other girls, which obviously resulted in a thrashing—but I kept taking it. In reality, I think it fits me, because there’s not much that I won’t do physically. Which is how I ended up with an almost broken neck. They say it’s broken, but technically it’s not fully there—it’s an extreme herniation that stopped spinal fluid from reaching my C6 and my C7 vertebrae. It’s so herniated that a piece was about to push through my spinal cord, which would have resulted in paralysis or death.

  I think it all started when I did a match where I was thrown into the stairs in 2015. During moves like that, the crew is supposed to leave the stairs unattached so that they move when you’re thrown into them. But the crew had put a steel bar through the stairs to hold them in place and then forgot to tell us. I went into the stairs like a linebacker and ricocheted off. It felt like hitting a brick wall. I thought I had broken my collarbone but pushed through the pain to the end of the match.

  I think that might have started the herniation—I definitely didn’t feel right after. Even though my collarbone was intact, I think I might have separated my shoulder and tweaked my upper back. But ultimately, it was my finisher, “The Rack Attack,” that I realized was slowly breaking my neck. To do it, I lifted my opponent over my shoulders and then jumped to my knees—but this time it was like doing that while holding weights on my neck, and it was crunching me.

  Over time my legs started to go numb. Every now and then I would walk and feel like they would be about to go out, or I’d wake up and they’d be completely numb. I told the doctors about it, and they told me to keep an eye on it but that it was probably nothing. I knew it was serious in Australia in July 2015, because my body kept giving out. My legs would just collapse out from beneath me during my finisher. I was sharing a room with Brie on that trip, and in the middle of the night I woke up because I couldn’t lie down anymore. I stood in the bathroom for two hours crying because of the pain. I knew I was in trouble.

  I had all these lumps all over my back and would lie on ice packs on the floor trying to get them to go down. I went to a naturopath who injected them with CO2 gas, to see if he could get them to dissolve. I assumed that something was wrong with my back or my shoulder—I never thought that it could be my neck. I kept going to the doctor, but because my hands weren’t numb, they told me that I was likely just tired and run-down because of the abuse I was putting my body through in the ring. I kept telling them that there was something wrong. I’ve been an athlete for my whole life and can distinguish wear and tear from injury.

  I asked for an MRI, but they told me that it wouldn’t show anything. They had no answer when I explained that my legs were going numb and giving out on me in matches, that I could only lie down in bed for a few hours at a time. Finally I had an MRI. I was in Austin, Texas, and I was backstage. A doctor came up to me to say: “Just so you know, we’re not going to find anything.” I would have given anything for that to be true.

  I had dropped the title, and my rematch was coming up. I had a match in San Diego for Raw that I won, and then I flew to Phoenix for SmackDown the following night. I went for the MRI on that Tuesday afternoon before the taping. The doctor took one look at it and said: “This girl is about to break her neck in half.” WWE sent me home. I wanted to see the WWE medical director but couldn’t seem to get an appointment. Finally, I texted the office: “Is it because I’m a woman that I don’t get the same treatment as the male Superstars?” I got an appointment. When he saw my MRI, his jaw dropped—he had only seen the same condition in one pro football player. He instructed me to get a cortisone epidural and rest to see if I could recover on my own without surgical intervention.

  I went back to Tampa and went to the hospital to have the epidural. The ER doctor came in and told me that I was on the cusp of being paralyzed. It was clear that he didn’t agree with my treatment plan. He told me to be incredibly careful—one slip, one fender bender, and it could be enough. I was really frustrated because I felt like if I were a male Superstar, I’d be getting radically different treatment instead of being instructed to just sit at home and pray.

  That’s when I asked Nattie to connect me with the neurosurgeon who had worked on her husband, Tyson Kidd. He had suffered a career-ending neck fracture in 2015. Dr. Juan Uribe is one of the best neurosurgeons in the world, and he was willing to listen when I told him how lost and confused I felt. He asked for my MRI and then called me to tell me that I needed to see him immediately. He was shocked that I was even walking and couldn’t believe that I hadn’t had surgery.

  With most neck injuries, the standard protocol is to go through the back and replace your neck with a fake one. But he told me that my life would essentially be ruined by that intervention, and that I could no longer be active in the same way. He felt like I was way too young. Dr. Uribe offered an alternative, though he cautioned me that it might not work. He suggested going in through the front of my neck. He created a special instrument, sort of like a candy cane, that he inserted into my neck to scrape off the herniation and then repair it like a bone fusion. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get all of it out but thought he could get enough to make the surgery work. If it didn’t work, he told me we’d have to resort to going through the back and doing a typical repair.

  In January 2016, I underwent surgery and Dr. Uribe was successful. I had been told that my career was over, but I got back in the ring just seven months later. I managed to do it because I followed Dr. Uribe’s instructions to a T. My family rallied around me to help me mend. Dr. Uribe instructed me to keep my brace on for six months straight, and for the first three months to not so much as get into a car—and if I had to get into a car, to stay off freeways. He told me that if I could commit to that, I’d come back strong. And he was absolutely right. I did my neck exercises and physical therapy, and I kept going to the gym, if only to lift two-pound hand weights and do some air squats. I knew I had to stay engaged and active if I wanted to wrestle again, that I couldn’t let it all go by sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

  When they took my brace off after six months, my neck wasn’t fully fused, and likely it won’t ever be. But I decided I wanted to stage my comeback seven months later, at SummerSlam in August, and I set my mind to it. I followed my physical therapy routine to a T, even though it felt at times like I was doing nothing and I would never get there, and I continued to do more as my doctor signed off.

  I was working with my ex toward a massive match in April at WrestleMania. We were busy building story and momentum, but that final match very nearly didn’t happen. A few weeks before WrestleMania, I messed up my timing and speared my head into Tyler Breeze’s abs. When we collided, I felt this incredibly painful rush from my chin to the back of my skull. It felt like something was bursting out of my head. My head had even started bleeding. I had adrenaline though, so I managed to pick Tyler up and hit him with my Rack 2.0 finisher. My ex grabbed me, but I was in so much pain I couldn’t even talk.

  The doctors took me to the back, and I was so out of it they made the (correct) call that I couldn’t wrestle that weekend. I went to see Dr. Uribe, who told me that I had herniated the disc above where I had the surgery. He felt strongly that I needed to be done with wrestling. This herniation would likely heal, but the m
inute I got another, I would need double bone fusion, or end up paralyzed or dead. I convinced him I would take it easy and not do a lot out there. I told him that I understood I could never be a full-time wrestler again.

  This time around, WWE did not want to let me compete. I had to get X-rays and MRIs, and a litany of tests, to ensure that I would be okay. They didn’t clear me until the Wednesday before my WrestleMania match. That match was meaningful to me for so many reasons. WrestleMania is a huge deal for women, in general, but this was my chance to do a match with my then current love. And as luck would have it, he then proposed to me in front of millions of WWE fans. It was a moment I had been waiting for my entire life.

  As I promised to Dr. Uribe, I haven’t been able to be a full-time wrestler since. I had to let that herniated disc heal, which took time (though it gave me an opportunity to do Dancing with the Stars). I’m very aware that if I get hit in the wrong way, that will be it for me in the same way that happened with Paige. Paige and I have a very similar injury. I never wanted to have to tell the women to be careful with me out there, but they all know they now have to avoid my neck at all costs. Even so, accidents happened. Best-laid plans and all of that.

  It’s a bummer, though. There are so many stories that I still want to tell in the ring. I wish I could have had a singles story with Sasha Banks, Asuka, Alexa Bliss, Bayley, and Becky Lynch. And I would love to finish my business with Charlotte Flair, who I was in a storyline with when my neck gave out. But I’m getting older now, and looking back at life in general, I’ve come to realize that health is first. There’s so much more to life outside of wrestling. When I was younger, I wanted to die out there in the ring, but now I can recognize my wrestling career for what it’s been—an incredible chapter of my life. Life-making, really. And I’m much more focused now on what I can do to help women outside of the ring, how I can continue to help women break barriers across industries. I’m excited to build brands with my sister that extend beyond the ring. I’ve become much more mature.

  When you wrestle for as long as I have and have had as many major life moments in the ring, it’s hard to find a moment of closure, when you can say, “I’m done,” and feel good about it. I’m still waiting for the moment when I feel truly ready to hang up my snapback and Nikes, to acknowledge that it is okay that it is over, because I have had a helluva twelve-year-run. It’s been particularly hard to find that moment because the sport for women has been rapidly changing recently, and I want to continue to see this movement through.

  At first, I felt like closure would come at the Royal Rumble in January 2018, when the women got to do that historic match for the first time ever. Brie and I were thrilled when WWE asked us to be part of it. The Royal Rumble is a thirty-woman match that takes place over nearly an hour—and I almost fell over when they told me I would get to come out at #27 and work with the amazing Japanese wrestler Asuka. Vince is masterful at psychology, and so his thinking was that because Asuka is undefeated, the crowd would assume that Nikki Bella would be the one to break the streak. I had never wrestled her before, and it was incredible to work with her—she gave me a lot, and I don’t think she’ll ever know how grateful I am for that.

  It was an incredible night with a not incredible finish. Asuka beat me and retained her winning streak, and then they made the decision to close it out by debuting Ronda Rousey. This was a little triggering for me in the moment. I unleashed a tweetstorm, which in retrospect was probably an overreaction. It was nothing against Ronda—it is thrilling that she is at WWE—but it was a bit of a slap in the face to all the historic women wrestlers who had come out for the match, the main event, only to have the moment upstaged by the Ronda announcement. It just didn’t need to happen like that. It dominated the postshow news cycle and became the only thing everyone wanted to talk about—not the historic Royal Rumble and Asuka’s dominance in the league. And by the way, it sucked for Ronda, too. Because that’s no way to join a team—they threw her right into the lion’s den.

  As amazing as it was when we actually went live, the lead-up to the Royal Rumble was stressful. The men knew we were doing our finish, but that day they petitioned WWE to let them do that finish instead. And for some implausible reason, even though we were the main event, we were told that we would have to change our version. Asuka doesn’t speak English, which made talking through variations hard. And we needed space to work, so they told us that we should drive back to the hotel (thirty minutes away) and work on something different in the ninety minutes before showtime. In a frantic dash, we worked up an alternative ending, and then the men changed their minds again and we were able to keep the original. It was one of the most stressful few hours of my life! Besides the unnecessary backflips, a bunch of guys were apparently pissed that we were the main event, too. We had waited decades for the historic opportunity; we deserved the chance to bask in it.

  Moments and situations like those make me want to bang my head into the wall. Just give women one night! Let them do the finish they want to do without challenging it. Then don’t debut a massive Superstar. It was a bummer because the women didn’t get a chance to talk about what happened out there. We didn’t get to tell the press that we’d had to abide by the same rules as the men, that we had to go over the top rope to be eliminated. Many of the girls out there had never gone over a top rope—it’s scary! The interviews postshow would have been incredible. But instead, they’ll never be able to capture the emotion of the event.

  But that wasn’t our last chance to change history. In the summer of 2018, Vince McMahon called to tell me that he was debuting Evolution, the first all-women pay-per-view event. And he asked me if I wanted to fight Ronda Rousey, the champion. While I thought I was done after the Royal Rumble, I jumped at the chance to come back and do a story with her in the ring.

  In many ways, it was tough to stage a comeback. Physically, always, but it was particularly hard post-breakup with my fiancé. Everyone assumes that our Total Bellas TV storylines are fake, and that we put the drama on just like we do in the WWE ring. But the cameras capture everything, including the hard stuff. The show closely adheres to the reality of our lives. Throughout the comeback I was in a lot of pain. Besides the craziness of running two businesses and filming a reality show, I was crying myself to sleep every night and not sleeping. Those two-and-a-half months were some of my hardest yet. It didn’t feel like the comeback that I wanted.

  But the day of Evolution, it felt worth it—it was incredible. Backstage was full of emotion. It was such a strange experience to only see women, for one. And the energy from the crowd was coming all the way back to reach us. When I walked out on the ramp for the sold-out show, I realized that half of the audience was the Bella Army—they had turned up in spades. We had done a pep rally the night before, and they were supportive and amazing to all of us. I was hopeful that they would be ringside, but I had no idea what it would actually feel like to walk out and see an arena full of women and men holding Bella Army signs and screaming their heads off for all of us. That’s a memory that will be seared into my mind for the rest of my life. Nothing can top that, even my main event match against Ronda. All the women that night left everything out there in the ring.

  It finally felt like what we had been fighting for—for so long—had arrived. It was a movement for equality: being called by the same title, having the same time in the ring. It felt like respect and fairness. That night was career-justifying. That night was worth breaking my neck for.

  CHAPTER 8 A STORY OF SUBMISSION

  2010-2018

  New York, New York

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Brie

  My now husband didn’t tell me he loved me until the day he proposed. He had warned me in our early days of dating that he wouldn’t say it. He had only ever told two people he loved them: his mom, Betty, and his sister, Billie Sue. He thought the way we all throw the word around—“I love this smoothie, I love the way these pants make my ass look, I love you, I lov
e pasta”—cheapened it, made it meaningless. I thought it was a funny thing to say at the time. It was so very Bryan, who loves making rules and then actually sticking to them. I didn’t think it was a big deal, because I honestly didn’t think we’d ever be serious enough to say it.

  I first met Bryan in February 2010. He’d had an epic and long career in the independents—and was an internet darling thanks to his high-flying, technical Japanese wrestling style. For context, he has had several documented concussions in his career, and he started racking them up early on. His first came in Japan, when he went to do a backflip off the top rope onto the floor. In WWE, the top rope is made of rope, but in Japan it’s a cable covered in a PVC-like plastic. Bryan’s feet rolled and he crashed headfirst into the floor. The second came in Austin, Texas, in 2000, when he did a front flip off the top rope and his opponent failed to catch him. The third, only a week later, was when he planned to jump off the top rope and through a table, but he overshot the other guy and cracked his head on the metal spoke in the table after he went through it. To put it lightly, he is one of those guys who fully paid his dues working up the ranks. He would tell you that he didn’t know if he even wanted a career in WWE, which is more performative and less risky, from a wrestling perspective, than the indies. But the money is certainly better.

  Before we were ever in a storyline together, we talked for the first time at the baggage claim in New York City. I had just moved to the city, and it was clear that he had no clue which Bella I was—he distinguished the two of us as the one who lived in New York City and the one who lived in San Diego. A few months later, they developed a storyline for me and Nicole where we were both in hot pursuit of him (he picked his WWE Superstar name, Daniel Bryan, by the way, over Buddy Peacock … even though Buddy Peacock would definitely be a great porn name) because we had heard that his virginity was up for grabs. The punchline was that he wasn’t a virgin—he was actually a vegan. At first Bryan hated the concept since he thought it made him look like a loser. He wasn’t used to the campiness of WWE at that point—or how you can work silly storylines to become a fan favorite—but he warmed up to the story over time. The funniest “oops,” which he recounted in his own memoir, was when we were working an entrance where he’d squat and we’d step on his thighs to get up into the ring—in that moment, during a live event, we realized we had both forgotten to put on underwear. I wish I could say this was a one-off, but we frequently forgot our underwear, and we probably gave everyone ringside an accidental show. He also convinced us to join in on this airplane gimmick—we would make plane arms as we would valet him down the ramp. Then he would pick up Teddy DiBiase Jr. and airplane him over his head until Teddy was really dizzy. Then Nicole would pick up Maryse, Teddy’s valet, and spin her around until she was really dizzy. Then I would slap Maryse, and Maryse would slap Teddy, and then roll him up for her finisher until he’d kick out. Then Bryan would roll him up and put his finisher on him. It was good, dorky WWE fun.