In October 2018, Nikki Bella was one of the featured superstars in a historic WWE event called Evolution. It was the company’s first all-women’s pay-per-view, and Bella’s match was the main event: a battle with “Raw” Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey, which she lost.
WWE is bringing back Evolution this Sunday, in Atlanta, with Bella, 41, rejoining a women’s division that has, well, evolved since the first edition of the event was held nearly seven years ago.
“The women have just raised the bar so much and they continue to steal the show, continue to steal the PLEs (premium live events, essentially WWE’s modern-day version of pay-per-views), as we saw at WrestleMania, we see every week, whether it’s ‘Monday Night Raw’ or ‘Friday Night SmackDown,’” Bella, who is also known to her fans as Nikki Garcia, tells TODAY.com. “So I just feel like it’s the perfect time to bring this back and to give the fans an entire show that is just dedicated to women’s wrestling.”
When the creation of the first Evolution was announced in 2018, then-WWE exec Stephanie McMahon and her husband, current Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, cited the demand on social media for more opportunities for female superstars as an inspiration for the event.
“Because of all of you, men and women using your voices for change, we are able to provide the platform to show the world that women can do anything and be anything they want to be,” McMahon said at the time.
In the years since, WWE’s women’s division has seen the emergence of top stars like Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair, and the continuing presence of veterans such as Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair. It was Lynch and Flair who, along with Rousey, became the first women to main event a WrestleMania, in 2019, less than a year after Evolution. (Belair faced former WWE star Sasha Banks in 2021 in the first WrestleMania main event to feature two Black women.)
Bella, a multiple-time champion and a WWE Hall of Famer, has taken notice of what the current crop of female superstars can do in the ring.
“The athletic ability is just through the roof. They are doing some of the same type of matches the men are. Like, beyond being in a cage. It’s with tables and ladders, and it’s the movement and the storytelling and what they do,” she says.
Bella believes Evolution can become an annual event once the women have the opportunity to showcase their skills this weekend. Not only does she believe it, but she says Evolution needs to be an annual event.
“I think people constantly want more of the women and also, it gives us something different,” she explains. “All of our PLEs are special and different in their own unique ways, and why not have something just for the women every year?”
Bella stepped back from wrestling in 2019 due to an injury but has made occasional high-profile appearances since, including in this year’s women’s Royal Rumble match. She announced on the July 7 episode of “Raw” that she will be taking part in a battle royal at Evolution. The winner will earn a championship match for the Clash in Paris event in late August.
About a month before she was named a participant in the battle royal, she was attacked by one half of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions, Liv Morgan, on “Raw.” The moment appeared to be a tease of an eventual match between the two, but Morgan later suffered a shoulder injury that, according to Bella, led to a change in plans.
Bella says of their storyline feud, “It was going to be a very epic story, very personal. It bums me out because we were taking it to a place that I feel like a lot of people haven’t yet taken it before, and it was going to end in having a match at Evolution. And that wasn’t going to be the end of it.”
As for what might happen between them once Morgan recovers from her injury?
“I don’t want to say too much because sometimes what’s the beauty of our business is injuries happen, but now this builds even more layers to a story that was going to happen and now can be in the future, and it just adds to it,” she says.
When asked whether the planned match for Evolution could have included Brie Bella — her twin sister, podcast co-host and fellow WWE Hall of Famer — she says, “It’s definitely been talked about and Brie hasn’t gotten the call yet (to participate in Evolution), but the fans want it really bad. I want it really bad. She wants it really bad. And I feel like my comeback won’t be complete until the Bella Twins reunite in the ring.”
Bella says she’s been getting into “really good shape” and that as long as her “body can do it,” she’s motivated to continue her wrestling career for the foreseeable future.
“I don’t want it to just be like, ‘Oh, yay, she showed her face and here she is and was,’” she says. “I want to have an impact. I want this comeback to make a statement and I want it to be for a while. I don’t want to do a quick in and out… I would really like to challenge myself in this new women’s division and push myself to the limits and get out of my comfort zone.”
Another source of motivation is her son, Matteo, who turns 5 in late July. It’s important to Bella that he be able to see her perform in the ring.
“I feel like we’re in this day now where these little boys get to be raised up seeing their moms be career women, be really strong women, empowering women, and he gets to see that up close and personal. It’s like raising my own little feminist,” she said during this week’s appearance on “TODAY.”
She echoes that thought during her interview with TODAY.com.
“From the moment I was pregnant, I’m like, ‘One day I want my son to be ringside to see what his mom’s done the majority of her life.’ And I want that to happen,” she says. “I think that’s what motivates me even more for this comeback, and to have an incredible comeback and have it be for a long time, is I want him to see that. I want him to feel it. I want him to have those core memories with him of like, that was my mom and this is what she did and this is how it impacted me and how it raised me to be.”
However, she makes it clear that her role as a mom takes priority over her role as a WWE superstar.
“My son will always be first no matter what, and if anything ever interferes with that, he’s No. 1. But I know as a career woman and as a professional wrestler and WWE superstar, I can make both happen and be great at both,” she says.
