In an interview with Mark Madden on 105.9 in Pittsburgh, WWE Divas Champion Nikki Bella discussed AJ Lee’s return to the company, AJ’s comments regarding the pay that Divas receive, the 30 second match on WWE RAW and more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On AJ Lee’s comments regarding Divas pay: “We’re all here because we’re living our dreams, whether it’s two minutes or twenty minutes on TV, I’m beyond grateful for that because there are millions of people that wish they could get to minutes in that ring and they can’t, so I’m not going to be one to b**** about it, but do I think Divas should definitely get more time on TV? 100%, but do I think pay is different? No.”
On Divas not having the star power to make money like John Cena and Brock Lesnar: “Let me put it this way, if a Diva was to headline a show, would those seats sell out like it does when John Cena is headlining, Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, absolutely not, we’re not there yet, we’re trying to get there, but we’re not there yet. As far as merch goes, we all get the same percentage, so I don’t know why anyone’s crying about it, we all make the exact same percentage, so it’s like, sell more merch if you wanna be like the guys. At the end of the day, we’re in a man’s world, people show up to watch men wrestle and they look at us as the pretty things on the side, but I think slowly, we’re changing people’s minds about that. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but eventually we’re gonna get there, we just need patience and time.”
On the 30 second match on WWE RAW and the reaction: “What’s funny about that is that we were given about three minutes, about three to four minutes and we, us four girls who were in the match, we put our heads together and said look, we can either give them a two minute match or we can give them nothing and get Brie and I so much heat and tell a great story. We’re not gonna give people three minutes of BS and it ended up being a big chance, it ended up turning into give Divas a chance trending worldwide for two days. I mean, we could’ve gone out there, done a few moves and called it a day, but we were like, how do we tell a great story and at the end of the day, that’s what we did. Brie and I got good heat at the end of it, we trended for two days straight and it was like, whoa, we’re storytelling now and that’s what puts the Divas on the next level. Instead of just going out there and doing moves, we storytell, because that’s what the boys do and that’s what we need to do.”
The interview is available in full at this link.
