Natalie Neidhart, who is known simply as Natalya in WWE, has recently entered her 16th year under contract with the company which can simply be considered as an incredible accomplishment in a female wrestler’s career. No other woman had previously performed in the company for such a long timespan without any break. For the past 15 years, she had fought to put respect for the women’s division.
Given her current state, Natalya might be happy to go for more than 15 years if the opportunities remain the same for her. In a telephone interview given to the Toronto Sun, she remembered entering the WWE, all the way back in 2007 after quitting her first job,
“In 2007, I quit my job and gave my employer my two weeks’ notice.”
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At that time, Natalya was hired by WWE to join its developmental system, then Deep South Wrestling to follow her dreams of being a wrestler and follow the footsteps of the Hart family legacy: her father, Jim (The Anvil) Neidhart, her grandfather, Stu Hart, her uncle, the legendary Bret (The Hitman) Hart and her late uncles Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith.
“I was so excited,” she recalled her first emotional experience after getting hired by the WWE. “I was like ‘Wow, I’m finally going to touch my dreams. To that point, I’d been sending tapes to WWE for like five years trying to get noticed, trying to get hired.”
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Natalya had to overcome obstacles to get into the biggest professional wrestling company in the world
Natalya started training in a wrestling ring with her now husband TJ Wilson, her uncles, and her grandfather in the historic Hart Dungeon, one of the world’s most famous wrestling schools in Canada that had produced the greatest wrestling talents of all time. That was in the early 2000s when pro wrestling was still very much of a man’s world but the young Neidhart was absolutely unfazed about breaking into the scene and possibly changing the game.
Proceeding in the interview, Natalya credited her time at the school where legends like Chris Jericho, Bret and Owen Hart, Bad News Brown had trained, for preparing her for a short independent scene stint. She wrestled in England and Japan before landing her contract with WWE.
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Physical strength helped Natalya to stretch up WWE career
Thus, the physical toughness in her was automatically instilled in the Neidhart that would set her up for such a long and bumpy road in the WWE. Building grit in herself wasn’t that much appreciated by the WWE at that time since they wanted to hire more Divas rather than bonafide wrestling talents, unlike now.
“There was so much reluctance to hire me,” Natalya remembered. “Because I didn’t fit that mold of what WWE wanted at the time. They wanted the hot, sexy girl that they could mold into whatever they wanted. I wasn’t that,” Neidhart recalled. “I was just very wholesome, kind of a little chubby and I loved wrestling.”
Natalya and her husband, TJ Wilson, both worked under the tutelage of Bruce and Ross Hart and the late Tokyo Joe Daigo. All these years later, they are cornerstone figures in the WWE to live up to the Neidhart family legacy. While she is the most veteran wrestler in the female locker room, TJ is one of the most experienced producers of WWE programming.
