One of the notable aspects of Indi Hartwell’s transition from WWE to TNA is her ability to retain her established ring name – a rare feat for talent departing the global promotion. Hartwell shared the fascinating storyof how she secured the rights to “Indi Hartwell” and the rather amusing tale of its creation. (Scroll down to listen to the full interview on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet).
“How’d you get to keep your name?” Chris Van Vliet inquired. “I just asked,” Hartwell responded simply, before elaborating on the process. “So I’ve had this name my whole wrestling career.”
She explained that upon starting in NXT, wrestlers typically use their real names for live events initially. However, she got an early break. “I think I had a dark match at NXT. And I just asked Road Dogg, like, ‘Can I be Indi Hartwell for this?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll ask. Why not?’ And then they let me be Indi Hartwell for the dark match. And then it kind of just like, kept going.” With the name appearing on TV, action figures, and video games, it became her established identity.
The situation changed with the advent of NXT 2.0. “They went through that whole weird thing of, like, you have to, you can’t have your real name, and you also can’t have a name that we don’t own. So they gave me the option to change my name or sell it to them. So I sold it to them.”
This decision lingered in her mind. “It was always in the back of my mind, like, oh my gosh, if I get released. Like. What name am I going to be? Like, that’s a big deal to me.” So, when the call about her release came, she was prepared. “They said, ‘okay, yeah, we’re releasing you.’ I said, ‘okay, cool. Um, so I sold my name to the company. Is there any way I can get that back?’ And then we got it all figured out. I got, I got the rights and stuff to it.”
“That’s a rare thing,” Van Vliet commented. “Yeah, I’m very lucky,” Hartwell acknowledged. “The fact that you can keep your name that makes this transition that much easier. Yeah, 100% I’m really blessed, because, like most people only know me as Indi.”
As for the origin of “Indi Hartwell,” the story is delightfully unconventional. “This is funny, because I use the porn star method,” she laughed. Explaining the method, often cited as combining a childhood pet’s name with the street one grew up on, she credited a different inspiration. “You know who Iggy Azalea is? …This was like, before I started wrestling, like, I’m a big fan of her, and that’s how she got her name, right? So then me and my friend, we were like, just coming up with our porn star name, and it was like, your dog name plus your street name, I think, yeah. And then Indi Hartwell was my friend’s dog name and street name.”
Years later, when a promoter asked for her wrestling name, “Indi Hartwell” came to mind. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, Indi Hartwell.’ And then that’s, that’s what it was.” The name also has a serendipitous connection to her current branding: “There’s no other Indi’s in wrestling that I know of, but also the whole like Indi Hartwell, indie wrestling, I’m indi wrestling. So it all worked out very well.” This is further reflected in her website, indiwrestling.com.
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.
