The Bella Twins Credit Freddie Prinze Jr For Pitching Stories To Get Them To The Main Roster

In an interview with Wrestling with Freddie (via Fightful), The Bella Twins credited Freddie Prinze Jr for pitching stories for them to join the main roster while they were still in FCW. Prinze was a writer in WWE from 2008 to 2009 and then a producer from 2010 to 2012. Here are highlights:

Brie Bella on why Freddie Prinze Jr deserves credit for their success: “We do give you [Freddie] a lot of credit because we were down in FCW for so long and they were like, ‘we just don’t know what to do with twins.’ We’re like, ‘seems like it writes itself.’ It was your ideas that you kept pushing that I think it made people in the company see there was something special. The greatest thing was there was no social media and FCW didn’t have television, so we nobody knew Nicole and I. It wasn’t Nikki so much as it was me. They kept saying they had no idea, I had a boyfriend at the time who was like, ‘you gave up everything for wrestling, at what point do you start to give back to the people who were there for you? You never see your family, I’m here alone.’ I was like, ‘that’s a good point.’ I was the one who pushed it. ‘Let us know. You told us at Diva Search you weren’t looking for two. We begged to tryout again. We drove here, we’re getting paid peanuts, if you have no idea what do with twins, we can go somewhere else.”

Prinze on how the Bellas progressed women’s wrestling: “That was the reason, I know this for a fact because he said the words, that was the reason the women’s matches started getting more time. The foundation that women are wrestling on today and other people have tried to take a lot of credit or maybe put more spotlight on themselves than they deserve. Ronda [Rousey] said some stuff that was weird to me where I was like, ‘I don’t know if you’re as aware of your influence or not.’ The reason women’s wrestling is at where it’s at today is because of what you two built and the other women you brought into that show helped also build. That’s why there are women headlining WrestleMania, that’s why there was an Iron Woman match in NXT and why all the women are allowed to do so much more with their bodies as far as work. It’s 90% because of the concrete ya’ll laid down.”

Nikki Bella on improving WWe’s presentation of women’s wrestling: “When we first signed with WWE and we made it to TV finally. We did a five-year contract. We were on TV for five years and our five years was coming up. I remember at that point, we didn’t like how women were treated in WWE. The two minute matches, but we were allowed to have 10 minutes at live events. What we were working on at live events, we could never showcase on TV and our stories didn’t have depth. I remember when our contract was coming up and we kept wanting to talk about it. ‘Yeah, we need to get to that.’ Finally, we got to the point of, ‘let’s not remind them and see what happens.’ Our contract is up after this one Raw and I’m champion. This is when I beat Beth and I’m like, ‘I wonder if anyone is going to talk to me about my contract.’ Sure enough, the reason why I dropped it to Layla out of nowhere is because I was like, ‘I’m not signing.’ They were like, ‘We’ll give you these stories.’ ‘You couldn’t even have a conversation with me.’ I was like, ‘We’re leaving.’ I dropped (the belt), they still thought Brie and I were probably going to sign after the show and they kept calling. When we left Raw in Chicago, that was it. Our contracts were up. We needed to find a way to be treated like the men and treated equally. That’s what we wanted for the women. We wanted to empower the women. We were about everyone. ‘Who are we getting over today? What’s the story?’ We never worried about getting our shit in. We just wanted everything to be good and for people to be happy. The locker room was becoming so miserable because girls were working so hard on live events and getting to Raw or SmackDown and being so disappointed. They were losing their will and their hope. We were like, ‘there needs to be a massive change here, this is not good’.”

Brie on how they pitched the idea to Vince: “Vince is about putting asses in seats. He cares about money. The one thing Total Divas did was it showed Vince that people were coming to the shows to see women. It was more than just men. It started being young girls and women buying tickets just to see the Total Divas. That’s when Vince was like, ‘we have to give them more time because people are actually coming to see them.’