Getting into WWE wasn’t easy for Natalya.
The former WWE Women’s Champion has had a storied career within the company, but it wasn’t simple. Natalya surely had her ups and downs in WWE, but the struggles she’s gone through have helped make her a stronger person overall.
Natalya is coming out with her new book, “The Last Hart Beating” and the WWE star is currently doing interviews left and right. One of those interviews was with Chris Van Vliet where Natalya described how having the Hart name almost kept her out of the WWE.
"It was hard, and now that I'm this deep into my career, I'm so happy that it was hard, because I grew so much from it being hard. I think it's important to go through hard things. If life was easy, we wouldn't grow, we wouldn't learn. For me, I built so much character in the struggle. Looking back on it now, the best, most fun times were figuring it out, I just have to figure it out. I think that's the thing with me is that it's always been a challenge.
Because on the outside you go, 'Well, she's part of the Hart family, that's got to be a door open for her, that kind of gets her foot in the door. She's got a bit of a name.' But when I was trying to get into WWE, Bret still had conflict with Vince. Bret got into the Hall of Fame in 2006, I was starting to wrestle in 2000. 2001 I was starting to have my first series of matches, but I was green, green, green, green.
But Bret and Vince still had lots of conflict, so that conflict wasn't really worked out for a long time. It was still very intense. So for me, I think it was hard because, yes, I have this name of being part of the Hart family, but there was tension, there was conflict that they have with Owen's wife, Martha. After Owen passed away, so tragically, the company had conflict there. They had conflict with Bret. And of course, my dad had worked in and out of WWE for many decades, but my dad had lost his job quite a bit. He was fired from WWE, I think five times."
Despite the difficulty of getting noticed by WWE, Natalya kept sending in her tapes just to get an opportunity. There was plenty of hardship during those early days that made the former WWE Women’s Champion so grateful of the journey that’s she been on in the last 15 plus years.
"So there was just a lot of baggage with the Hart family. I think that there was times, nobody told me this, but I could just assume this, that there were times that they were like, stay away from the Harts a little bit, we got the stuff with Bret going on. It was complicated. But families can be complicated. So it was just challenging for me to get hired. I kept sending in tapes. I kept trying. I would never, ever, ever ask Bret to do anything. And also, Bret's not going to call anyone up, because he's not on speaking terms with the company back then.
So it was just me sending in tapes to Dr Tom Pritchard, that was the only person that I knew of through a friend to send tapes to, and he was just the coach at developmental. I mean, he wasn't just a coach, but he wasn't like a head honcho. It wasn’t like my dad was making phone calls to Vince McMahon, and I was getting in, it was just so hard because the family, like I couldn't. My dad was struggling with a lot of personal stuff at that time, and he wasn't well, but I love that it was hard for me to get hired. I love that so much, because it makes for a great story."
Check out the full interview where Natalya talks about the embarrassing fart gimmick that Vince gave her, writing her new book, her new character outside of WWE, and so much more!