Nikki Bella Reflects On In-Ring Raw Return, Not Having Time To Prepare For It

Nikki Bella reflected on her Raw in-ring return on the latest episode of her podcast with Brie. Nikki spoke about her return match on the brand on SiriusXM’s The Nikki & Brie Show. The show sent along some highlights and you can check them out below:

On her in-ring return on Raw: “Well, I just think they usually go if they haven’t had their match, what we all know is they’re at the PC all week training every day for that one moment, right? When I got hit with that, I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ and I was like, ‘Wait, are you sure? How long?’ I just was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and you know me, I don’t say no to opportunities. I always just think of like, ‘Well, how can I make this work out the best?’ But yeah, no prep. I wanted to try and get in the ring Sunday morning and then it was all taken, all full, so then I asked about like Monday early, it didn’t, because of having the two back to back pay-per-views, didn’t get built to like 1:30 but I was, I feel like it’s so different now and I actually couldn’t believe how composed I was from how I would be, but it’s really weird, Brie. All the really hardcore work you and I have done, especially in the past few years, like what a good four years or five maybe… Life coach, breath work, meditation, giving yourself grace, all the things.

“It’s weird that I, like it was even like this in Battle Royale. Nerves, but not like how I have felt in the past where it just felt uncontrollable, it overtakes. I just was able to get myself in a place like, ‘You’re gonna have fun. You’re nervous, but just be confident.’ I’m gonna also say training up the dungeon helps you with that. Nattie has trained me in a way where she’s like, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do, you have confidence, you deliver.’ She’s taught me how to just do even the simplest things, but when you have confidence behind it, like how big it looks.”

On her performance in the match: “You know me, I put a lot of pressure on myself and when you’re having a match live, and this is in any sport, you are opening up for judgment, critique and all the things and I just wanted this first one to set a certain standard. I didn’t want there to be any sloppiness or anything missed, because I know how hard then the critique will follow me. ‘O.C., and this and that,’ so instantly when that happened, it’s sad, but that’s immediately what I felt was like, ‘I hope this doesn’t bite me in the ass,’ and what’s crazy is I’ve never done that ever and it was funny because I went after someone on Twitter, and then they ended up deleting it because they knew I was right. Chelsea had wrote to me, ‘You can look, but you can’t touch,’ and then I wrote back, ‘I looked, I touched and I won. Besos,’ so then someone wrote, ‘No, you looked, you botched, and then won,’ and so this is what I said. ‘All from the IWC of haters, let me educate. Botched, of a task carried out badly or carelessly, but what you meant to say is, you looked, you snatched on your OG finisher that broke your neck, you protected yourself, you won. Yay, we learned something new today. Hashtag haters gonna hate, Bellas gonna ball.’

“Because, you know, we throw around that word a lot in our industry, botched, and these are people who write that, are non-athletic people who’ve never played a sport, let alone a professional sport, so you have to be careful using the word botched. Botched is when someone does something and they’re careless and that ends up creating something. In my situation, I went up for something that broke my neck, so I either could have in that moment hit it and re-injured myself or worse, or I could have been like, ‘I’m gonna be embarrassed. I’m gonna get something from this, but I’m gonna set her down and I’m gonna try to now, she’s either gonna hit me with something or I’m gonna hit her with something. I’m gonna try to get my finisher back on.’ Right? So, it’s not a botch. It’s actually being smart.”