WWE: Why The Bella Twins May Be The Babyfaces In Their Feud With Ronda Rousey

Photo Source: WWE.com via Twitter

Just a few days from now, the first all women’s pay-per-view event WWE Evolution will be highlighted by a Raw Women’s Championship match between the champion Ronda Rousey and the challenger Nikki Bella (with her sister Brie in her corner).

To hype up their match at the pay-per-view, The Bella Twins turned heel and attacked Rousey after befriending her months prior. Rousey would retaliate the following week in a scathing promo against the duo. In the promo, Rousey called them “Do Nothing Bellas” and essentially said they’ve only found success because they rode off the coattails of their current and former lovers, Daniel Bryan and John Cena.

Maybe we’re crazy for thinking this, but we think Rousey’s promo did more to paint them as babyfaces than heels. Yes, Rousey received a bevy of cheers throughout her promo – mostly because many of her comments echoed the criticisms that a large bulk of the wrestling community threw at The Bellas during their heyday – but in our eyes at least, the promo highlighted The Bella Twins as overlooked underdogs of the women’s division.

When we take away the heel cadence of The Bellas’s promo, and switch it with Rousey’s sympathetic delivery, we have more reasons for why The Bellas are currently the biggest babyfaces in WWE’s women’s division.

For instance, let’s look at The Bellas biggest observation from their side of the promo, as characters. They said that they turned on the former UFC Champion because it made them sick to see Rousey at the forefront of the new women’s evolution; both the pay-per-view, and referencing Rousey’s spotlight as the face of the division.

That’s a criticism that a percentage of the wrestling community have already made against WWE’s promotion of Rousey. Not just as far as her placement in the current division, but also how she’s positioned at the forefront of every Evolution poster over well regarded Hall of Famers and Superstars who’ve spent more time on the main roster than Rousey.

Nikki and Brie Bella first signed with the WWE in 2007. Over the course of six years, they spent countless days on the road, from developmental, to televised bouts, and to house shows. Not to mention the relentless hours of training that the duo had to put in.

Even when female wrestlers weren’t afforded much more than five minutes in the ring per match on a regular basis, they still needed to know the basics of in-ring wrestling, and that takes hours a day to master.

The Bella Twins were also featured prominently in storylines, suffering crushing defeats and triumphant wins along the way. Keep in mind, all of this success came long before anyone started “leeching” off of the names of Daniel Bryan and John Cena, so Rousey alleged.

Both women won the Divas Championship, with Brie’s reign lasting a couple months and Nikki’s first reign lasting less than a week. Ironically enough, while her first reign was one of the shortest in the title’s history, Nikki’s second reign would go on to become the longest of all time.

Before that second reign would come, The Bellas would ask for their release after accomplishing everything there was to accomplish in WWE in a division that the company refused to take seriously. While they could have just tossed their wrestling careers behind them in their rear window, they continued to make appearances on the independent circuit in extremely small venues in front of even smaller crowds.

After doing that for a year, they were asked to return to the WWE in a bigger role, going on to become the faces of Total Divas, before receiving their own Total Bellas spinoff. Despite Rousey claiming otherwise, it sounds like both of The Bella Twins more than paid their dues to get where they are today.

Ronda Rousey, meanwhile, is an MMA outsider who – after her UFC career saw her undefeated streak end unceremoniously – joined the WWE, and received her first title shot in her second pay-per-view match.

In her third pay-per-view match, she won the title. We’re not saying that Rousey hasn’t earned her keep in her own way for the WWE – either in front of the camera or backstage – but we’d be amiss if we didn’t point out that Rousey’s road to success in WWE was an easier one than that of The Bellas.

Maybe Rousey should’ve considered her own path to success before pointing fingers against who was less than deserving of a spot in WWE.

Then, there’s the part of the promo where Nikki Bella pointed out that her and her sister knocked down doors and barriers during their careers in the WWE.

Granted, the big pop only came when Rousey counterattacked by claiming Nikki only knocked down “the door to John Cena’s bedroom,” but Nikki’s point remains the same, and it’s a prevalent one at that. This is where we realized that The Bella Twins have been underdogs throughout much of their WWE careers.

When we look at the Divas Revolution, or the Women’s Revolution, the women of NXT and the Four Horsewomen are usually cited as the pioneers who helped demand that the company take women seriously after putting on – what at the time were considered – surprisingly long and stellar matches down in developmental.

While that is true in many ways, let’s not forget that The Bellas played a big part in the Revolution as well. Let’s not forget that the #GiveDivasAChance hashtag had started following a ridiculously short tag team match involving The Bella Twins.

Fans would not have been so compelled to get that hashtag trending if they did not believe that all four women in the ring that night deserved to be given a chance, along with the rest of the division. The entire Women’s Revolution was a collaborative effort between all of the women who ever took part in the division.

Unfortunately, The Bellas often get overlooked and shafted for their contributions to the movement. The Bellas often get associated with this “Us vs Them” narrative, or rather “real women vs Divas.”

It’s a narrative that was reiterated through the lips of Ronda Rousey during her promo, it was a narrative highlighted in AJ Lee’s infamous “Pipe Bombshell” from so many years ago, and it’s a narrative that often persists across detractors of the duo within the wrestling community.

Despite all of the slander that The Bellas have received over the years, they used their platform afforded to them by Total Divas and Total Bellas to help bring more mainstream attention to the WWE.

Despite common misconceptions about them from fans who claim they’re in it for the money or they don’t love the business or are only successful because of their partners, they still walk into work every week and give 110% in and out the ring.

We don’t know about y’all, but that sounds like a narrative befitting of heroes, not villains. Babyfaces, not heels. They’ve chased and grabbed the proverbial brass ring of success despite their critics bashing them for over a decade in WWE.

Maybe we’ll see them prove critics wrong again this Sunday at Evolution, live on the WWE Network. We’ll have to wait and see, but for now, we know who we’re rooting for between Ronda Rousey and Nikki Bella, and it won’t be for the face of the division. It’ll be for the babyfaces that we’ve been overlooking for over ten years.