In Defense Of: Brie Bella

Anybody that’s talked the pro wrestling with me knows that I’ve been down with the Bella Twins since Day One. I’ve been a fan since the first time Brie showed up on SmackDown wrestling Victoria and got the win with the help of some Twin Magic. The Fabulous Ones got over huge by pulling off “the switch” during their matches, and Nikki & Brie looked more alike than Stan Lane & Steve Keirn did. Well, they did when their careers started. You could sell me on the idea that Stan & Steve looked more alike in 1982 than Nikki & Brie do in 2018.

I’m one of the few people that’s written columns on the Internet for most of their careers that’s supported their cause. I think that’s provided some fuel for my fandom over the years. We all like to rage against the machine every now & then, and I feel like the Bellas have gotten a bad rap over the years. Many hardcore fans have been biased against Nikki & Brie since their careers began. Nothing either Bella does will win them over. For example, Nikki became a really good worker towards the end of her career, but some people would rather die than admit it.

As somebody with experience as a “hater”, I can understand the reasons why Bella haters exist. When they started out, it was because they were attractive women. Many wrestling fans have difficulty supporting attractive women due to bitterness over rejection. I’m the kind of guy that wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would permit somebody like me to enter, so this was never an issue for me.

Later on, people got real pissy about the Bellas due to who they were dating. Early on in my wrestling writing career, I would constantly mention how dating in the workplace was a bad idea, and wrestling relationships never work out. This was largely based on Macho Man & Elizabeth getting divorced less than a year after SummerSlam 1991. It shook me as a child. Two things changed my mind on that. One was Triple H marrying Stephanie McMahon. I never thought that would work out. The other was my realization that love is a tremendously difficult thing to find, and I’m not capable of questioning where it’s found.

Obviously, the John Cena/Nikki Bella engagement didn’t end well. The less said about that, the better. Daniel Bryan & Brie Bella did get married, and from all accounts it’s a happy & loving relationship, with ups & downs like every other marriage. We should all wish them nothing but the best. I know there’s a lot of people out there that want to hate, but I feel they should appreciate.

Now, I know this is a strange thing in 2018, where everybody is required to take a side on every single issue and ignore the faults of the people that agree with them. We’re seeing it in Washington right now. One party would vote to confirm their guy if he committed every single crime in the book. Sexual assault against women, children, farm animals, it doesn’t matter as long as he’s on their side of the political spectrum. The other party would vote against the guy if he was the second coming of Mother Teresa & happened to somehow gain the approval of the other side. I mean, theoretically this would all work if the politicians actually represented their constituents instead of their own self-interests & the interests of the people paying them off, but hahahahahaha oh I should probably have already shut up about all that.

I’m a huge Brie Bella fan, but I’ll admit that she hasn’t been good in the ring since returning. The suicide dives were inexcusable on a couple of levels. One, that she wanted to do them & as far as we could tell didn’t practice beforehand. (Maybe she did & it went better then?) Two, that she did another one after the failure of the first one. Three, that whoever laid the match out thought that Brie doing suicide dives was a good idea. We all need people editing us.

The Maryse stuff worked for me, mostly because Maryse was a great chickenshit heel & spent most of her time running away from Brie. That was exactly what people wanted to see, and Brie got positive heat whenever she got her hands on Maryse. It wasn’t Workrate 101 or a five star wrestling classic, but it didn’t need to be.

Monday night was an unmitigated disaster. Brie was doing the Yes Kicks to Liv Morgan & landed a couple to Morgan’s head. There’s no worse feeling for most wrestlers than when they hurt an opponent that’s giving them their body.

Every match on #Raw is an opportunity for us to entertain our fans. Our intentions as @WWE Superstars is to win the match, never injure our opponents. Thinking about @YaOnlyLivvOnce tonight. ❤️ -B

— Nikki & Brie (@BellaTwins) September 25, 2018

There’s nothing that we can say that will make Brie feel worse about it. Not that plenty of keyboard warriors won’t try. Twitter Tip: Don’t click on the comments on people you follow, since the haters are all over that stuff. I assume that any woman with a Twitter account never looks at the comments. I’d go insane if I had the kind of comments that most of the people I follow get. Thank Jeebus I’m not popular.

I’ve realized over the years that I can’t tell people where & when to fall in love. I’ve always known that I can’t tell people when to retire. A lot of people think they know when Brie Bella should retire from wrestling. People that have never taken a bump in their life thinking they can judge that kinda thing. A lot of people would like Nikki to go off into the sunset with her, because they’ve had a grudge against the Bellas for years for the reasons we’ve already highlighted here.

Nobody’s making excuses for Brie, at least nobody credible that I’ve seen. I wonder how the people criticizing Brie now felt about Big Van Vader stiffing everybody in sight. Or how they felt about Stan Hansen lariating people without his glasses on. Or, how they felt about anybody in the history of wrestling getting potatoed before Brie Bella caught Liv Morgan with some kicks.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not excusing Brie for what happened on Monday night at all. She screwed up. I’m just wondering how these keyboard warriors feel. Did they love that Vader vs. Ric Flair match at Starrcade 1993 where Vader potatoed Naitch all across the ring? Do they mark out every time some Japanese wrestler gets dropped on their head & give the match tons of stars based on it? Do they choose to remember Jim Ross’s warning that “it ain’t ballet” except when it involves one of their least favorite wrestlers stiffing somebody?

I feel like there’s a lot of selective criticism going on here. If you’re going to knock Brie Bella for knocking Liv Morgan out, I better see you all over the case of the next WWE Superstar that botches something. Or I’ll assume that you only care when it’s a Bella messing something up, and I’ll value your opinion as much as either political party values the other’s opinion.