Opinion: Carmella is Right About Nikki Bella

This week on “Smackdown Live”, Carmella called out Nikki Bella and accused her of a few things. In addition to making a very rare mention of Bella’s real life relationship with John Cena, Carmella suggested that Bella is using her relationship and looks to become a celebrity with multiple reality shows. Bella gave her standard response with stuff like she wears the pants in her relationship and she’s fearless and all the same jazz you’ve heard time and time again from her.

 

The interesting thing is Carmella is right. Bella may indeed be famous and the closest thing WWE has to a crossover female star but why did she get those spots in the first place? Among a handful of other things, it’s because she’s a good looking woman (who has a good looking identical twin sister) and was dating Cena. If you don’t believe that this is a major reason why she’s on “Total Divas” and “Total Bellas”, tell me why her and Cena potentially getting engaged is the main focus of about 80% of “Total Divas”.

Now don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with using your circumstances or looks to get your foot in the door. Trish Stratus is one of the most successful female wrestlers of all time. Do you think she gets the chances she had without being a gorgeous blonde fitness model? Of course she made the most of her opportunities and put in a lot of hard work to set herself apart from the other gorgeous fitness models that have worked for WWE over the years.

Bella is a similar situation. She and her sister started in WWE developmental back in 2007, making the main roster in 2008. They proceeded to do…..well not much actually. Their big thing was Twin Magic, meaning they would switch behind the referee’s back. Other than that and a pair of forgettable Divas Title reigns, there wasn’t much to say about either of them.

They left the WWE in April 2012, returning a little less than a year later. However, this time there was something different. About four months after returning, the “Total Divas” reality show debuted on the E! Network. Soon after this, the Divas started getting more prominent TV time, eventually with Brie’s real life relationship with Daniel Bryan being acknowledged on WWE TV.

The Bellas eventually started a huge feud against each other before reuniting for a weakly explained reason of “well we’re family”. Nikki then won the Divas Title and held it for over 300 days, setting the record for the longest reign of all time. A neck injury eventually forced Nikki to the sideline and Brie retired in April 2016.

If it’s not clear, the Bellas’ second run was quite a bit bigger than their first. It’s not like they were light years better in the ring (though they did improve) but they had a reality TV show. Many of their stories were literally taking place because of events taking place on the show (ignore the fact that the show was taped months earlier and they were just getting around to fighting after it aired). This was the case for several members of the show’s cast but none of them rose as high as the Bellas.

On the strength of “Total Divas” and it’s “Total Bellas” spinoff, Nikki has become much more famous, both in wrestling and in the mainstream. She’s regularly seen at Hollywood events and just happens to often be on the arm of Cena as he rises up the mainstream ladder thanks to his various movie and TV roles.

Nikki is back in the ring from her neck injury (which happens to be the main plot point of the first season of “Total Bellas”) and gets to say FEARLESS a lot more because she’s come back from a serious injury. That is of course when we’re not hearing about her latest reality show which makes her all the more famous for whatever is going on this week with her OH SO WACKY family.

 

That brings us back to Carmella and her comments. How is she wrong? Nikki has become a much bigger deal in her second WWE run than the first and a lot of that is due to the reality shows. What I don’t understand is why that’s supposed to be such a bad thing. Nikki is a passable enough wrestler in the ring but her big appeals are her celebrity status and looks.

Over the years, Nikki has gotten better in the ring during her second run and that’s all well and good, but do you think she would have been pushed as the face of the division for all those months without her crossover appeal or connections behind the scenes? There’s nothing wrong with admitting you had some help but for some reason, Carmella is a villain for pointing out something that most fans figured out a long time ago. She may be treated like the heel in this story but like so many bad people in wrestling before her, that doesn’t mean she isn’t right.