As part of WWE’s Evolution Week, Charlotte Flair is the guest this week on “The Bellas” podcast hosted by Nikki and Brie Bella.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
The Bellas asked Charlotte how she got started in wrestling: “In April of 2012, I was at dinner with your stepfather, Johnny Laurinaitis, your mom and my dad and my brother Reid. My dad and your stepfather, Johnny, were super close. My dad and Johnny were talking on how to get my little brother motivated because he had a super bad drug addiction. He wanted to be in the WWE and he already failed two drug tests. So, Johnny looked at me while we were having dinner and asked why I wasn’t doing this? I said, I don’t know. I grew up watching the girls and then I saw you guys for like four years on TV, but I never saw myself in the same light. I was athletic but I never saw myself as the Diva standard. When Johnny said that, my little brother was like, yes, you got to do this. I was like, ok, I will do it thinking that if I signed and started in FCW, which is now NXT that my brother would get motivated and get on the same track. After Johnny talked to me that night, three months later I reported to Tampa, Fl and started not really knowing what the hell I was getting into. I just knew I wanted to escape where I was and there had to be more to life than that. I was 27 at the time and scared of my own shadow. Then a year later, my brother ended up dying. Ever since then, I’ve dedicated my journey to him and it’s been incredible. I spent so much time wanting to save his life, but he ended up saving mine, and here I am.”
Brie Bella talking about the incident that started the women’s revolution: “There was a point in all the women’s hearts that we were over the couple minute matches, over the storylines, and getting overlooked. I will say, I will never forget the night that Nicole and I had the match against Emma and Paige. It was supposed to be an 8 to 10-minute match. Of course, it gets cut down to 5. Then we are in gorilla and they say, ok lady, you have 2 minutes but wrap it up at 1:45 or something. All us girls looked at each other, like, let’s just go out and do finishers. The 2 minutes were with entrances. They wanted us to start with heat. They wanted a mini-comeback on us and then a quick finisher. All us girls were like, if they don’t want a match, then we won’t even do that. I’ll never forget when we all went out there and we only did the finisher, when we went back, Fit was like, you guys had another minute. The ref was like, what are you doing. Everyone was blown away. We were all disappointed but we never knew that what we did that night caused the big hashtag give Divas a chance. We did think it would wake people up, we thought it would wake people up in gorilla. Then, I think you and I caused chaos for almost a year, and me holding on to the Divas Championship for a long time, and it being controversial in the wrestling industry made it perfect timing for Stephanie to cut the promo in the ring in Atlanta. It was hard for me at that time not to take it personally. I remember when we all went into it. They yanked it because we were battling the verbage and we saved it for Atlanta. Looking back, I took so much personally which made it good for the story because when you can make it real, I’m like how are you throwing this on me. It was Stephanie who made it so good. It was that promo that made it so good.”
Charlotte talked about being proposed to by Andrade: “So, our first trip together, he took me to Cancun. When he first said, let’s go to Cancun, I was thinking spring break… We wanted to go to Cancun again for New Years. He took me to this really nice restaurant that was on the water. After we ate dessert, the waiter said let me take you this way. The restaurant at the top had a staircase to the dock where a yacht was waiting. We got on the boat, listening to music and drinking and we pulled up to two other big boats. We went on the nose. There were fireworks on the countdown. When we were listening to the music from the other big boats, I turned around and he was down on one knee. He knows how much I love boats and the water. For our first New Years, when we started dating, or whatever you want to call it, we would have to google translate to each other. Our first New Year’s, he could speak it but it was more like, ok, didn’t understand, we were google translating at the bar. Then we return next New Year to being proposed. Love speaks one language. I can understand his language but I can’t speak it. All the movies we watch have subtitles.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit The Bellas podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
