In a recent episode of The Nikki & Brie Show, The Garcia Twins (Nikki Garcia & Brie Garcia), the former Bella Twins in WWE, addressed the next chapter in their lives, using their real-life surnames going forward, as well as their decision to depart the WWE.

Nikki stated, “When our contract came up with WWE, mutually we all knew we needed to head into this next chapter. We are so grateful for the past 17 years, I have learned so much in and out of the ring, I have traveled all over the world, I have incredible fandom, it’s been amazing. This is part of relationships, whether it’s business, love, this is relationships in life, sometimes you come to this part of your life where it’s like, let’s go our separate ways, it doesn’t mean it’s forever, but we just know that it’s right.”

Brie followed that up stating, “It doesn’t mean that it’s bad either. When things like this happen, everyone wants to look for the negative, what happened, it had to be something crazy. It wasn’t, it was actually something beautiful, thought about it for a while, and this has been years coming. I want to thank Brie Bella, the character, the name pretty much that I’ve been the last 16-17 years, thank you to that name, because it caused a lot of change in my life and many lives, it did a lot of great things for me. It’s really fun to end that chapter. For everyone, at some point in your life, to do a new change, a new journey, I’m so excited to close that chapter on Brie Bella, put that book to the side, open up a new one and see what Brie Garcia is going to do next.”

On her gratitude to the Nikki Bella character, Nikki Garcia stated, “I’m so beyond grateful for Nikki Bella, she empowered me, she inspired me and she truly made me became fearless, I found so much of what I had, through pain, childhood or certain things that happened in my life, I lost that person, and it took Nikki Bella to bring her out. I will always be forever grateful to her and look up to who that person was, and still is, and the road that she has paved and what she has done for the women and the youth and will continue to do, just as Nikki Garcia. I’m grateful for it and what’s so amazing about starting this new chapter, and with our names, our roots, what was from birth, it’s super empowering because we’re betting on ourselves, that leap of faith and we’re taking that leap of faith, we’re re-introducing ourselves after 17 years and it shows, you and I have gotten to the point where we know our worth, we know what we’ve done and we know where we want to go. We’re at the point in our lives where we don’t want to hear no, we’ve worked on that for 17 years and this marks, finally, we put that in action a lot, but now, we’re doing it in a different way, something like that is super exciting and it’s great for other people to know.”

Brie added the following stating, “It’s weird because I say freeing, and a lot of people are like, what does she mean, but there’s something really freeing about going back to who you were, it’s like you can go back to being your unfiltered, uncensored self and I don’t have to apologize, it’s who I am. I always hate when I have to apologize, or be like, I’m sorry, didn’t mean to do that, when I actually did.”

The full episode is available at this link.