Indi Hartwell has opened up about the emotional “roller coaster” she experienced following her WWE release in November of the previous year. The Australian wrestler, now a part of the TNA roster, shared the candid details of her departure and the unusual circumstances surrounding her final televised WWE match. Scroll down to listen to the full interview.
“It’s been like up and down, like a roller coaster,” Hartwell told Chris Van Vliet. She described her initial reaction as one of gratitude. “First week, I was just super grateful for what I had. You know, I’m kind of like you. I like to saturate my mind with gratitude, and that helps me, like, keep perspective.”
However, that gratitude soon gave way to other emotions. “Second week, I kind of got like, frustrated and mad. Third week, I kind of got sad. And then after that, like, I felt, I felt fine. And now it’s been like five months, I think six months almost. And, yeah, I’ve been feeling really good, excited, because, like, there’s just so much to do.”
Hartwell admitted the lack of control was a significant challenge. “It feels like the hardest thing about it would be the fact that you have no control, right? Like it’s just taken away from you. Yeah, no, saying it, yeah.”
Surprisingly, Hartwell didn’t anticipate the release, especially given recent developments. “I didn’t honestly feel like it was coming, especially when it happened,” she stated. She explained that throughout her WWE tenure, the fear of release was a constant, amplified by her international status and visa concerns. “My whole time at WWE, I was always scared of getting released. And add another factor to is that I’m an international so people don’t really understand, like, visas, green cards… that was something that was like always in the back of my mind, like being scared of being fired.”
Ironically, she had just started to feel secure. “But it wasn’t till my last two weeks at WWE, I finally felt like comfortable… I did the Netflix shoot and then, and then I got released.” Thankfully, her Green Card situation had been resolved prior, courtesy of WWE. “Shout out to WWE, because they did it for me and they paid for it. This was a few years ago.”
The circumstances of her release notification were also unique. “Fun fact, I missed the call when they called me to release me, so I made the call to get fired,” Hartwell revealed. After seeing a missed call and a text from Talent Relations, she called back, initially thinking it was for a different reason and while she had lost her voice. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we’re calling with some unfortunate news.’ And I was so confused, because I wanted to say, but like, ‘What do you mean? Like, I’m on the show tonight, like my match was taped last week, like I’m on the show tonight.’ But yeah, it was, it was weird.”
Her final match, a tag team encounter with Candice LeRae against Bayley and Naomi, aired on SmackDown the very day she was released. “Some people didn’t know that that Smackdown was taped the week before, so they thought that I got released and then had to, like, go out that night and wrestle. Could you imagine?”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
