3. They Kept Maria From Returning To WWE
Maria Kanellis was a successful WWE diva in the mid to late 2000s. She was released in early 2010 and rumored to come back to the company in early 2013. Why didn't she? Because apparently the Bella Twins prevented that from happening. The story goes that they had an incident earlier in their careers when Nikki was dating Dolph Ziggler and she felt like Maria was getting too friendly with Dolph, so they had problems because of that. Here's how Maria explained it to
WrestlingInc in 2013: "It was very random. Me and Dolph Ziggler were very close friends. We have been for a long time before the twins ever arrived and one time I was dancing with Dolph at a party we were at, at a Green Iguana place or something. So we were all hanging out, having fun and dancing. I was dancing with him. I was dancing with the girls. I was dancing with the other people that were there. So all of a sudden when I'm dancing with Dolph I get a tap on the shoulder and it's Nikki Bella going, 'what are you doing?' And I said, 'uh, dancing with my friend?' And she's like, 'oh, he's with me.' I said 'okaaaay, sure.' I never heard that from anybody. I didn't know that I was doing something so wrong with dancing with friends. But, ever since then it's been very strange between us, but still, I would do business." The timeline on this would have been around 2009 or so when Nikki was dating Dolph. Apparently Nikki didn't forget it and Nikki was to blame for Maria not getting her job back. Maria seemed to be upset about it and said as much when she talked about Nikki contacting her: "They called me, I was busy. I sent her a text back. I said there's nothing really to talk about. I know what the story is and God bless you for it. I hope everything works out. There's no real reason to talk to her. She's not worth my time. She took something from me and it wasn't a man, or it wasn't a piece of candy, it was a contract. It's my career and I think for me, that's probably the worst thing you can do, is mess with my money. I'm not going anywhere. I'm in wrestling. I'm staying in wrestling and I'm sure our paths will cross again." Like most things in wrestling, time heals all wounds. Maria has done great work in Ring of Honor wrestling as well as New Japan with her wrestler husband Mike Bennett and she's gone back to school as well. She has said that it's not a big deal now. It appears to be a non-issue today, but it is pretty bad that Nikki cost Maria a job with WWE over something that shouldn't have been considered a big deal.