Natalya wants one thing cleared up about Nattie. It has nothing to do with Ronda Rousey.
The character arrived in 2025 and has taken over her WWE work since. Speaking to the Toronto Sun, Natalya said the comparison people reach for is the wrong one.
For me, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to explain this more on WWE programming in the near future, but for me, it’s not like I’m trying to reenact an MMA character, for example. It’s not like some people are like, ‘Oh, she’s just trying to be like Ronda Rousey.’ It’s like, no, I love Ronda, and I think Ronda did really cool work in WWE, but I feel like my character is still evolving and growing.
Her reference point is older than MMA’s place in wrestling.
The character is really just a derivative of what I did when I first started from my grandfather’s Dungeon. And I said this to Josh Barnett when we were first talking about me doing Bloodsport, I was like, ‘The Dungeon was Bloodsport before Bloodsport was Bloodsport.’
She debuted it at Bloodsport XIII during WrestleMania 41 weekend in Las Vegas, billed as Nattie Neidhart for the first time in over 15 years, and beat Miyu Yamashita by sharpshooter. She went on to beat Masha Slamovich, then Shayna Baszler at Bloodsport XV this April, and has never lost on one of those cards.
She has credited Barnett directly for the rest of it, calling him a huge catalyst and saying she wanted to prove to Triple H that she could do something completely different. The look changed with it, the pink Hart colors traded for black gear and slicked-back hair.
Nattie has been on Raw since, with an early feud against Maxxine Dupri.
Friday puts the character in front of a different crowd. Natalya is in a fatal four-way at Triplemania 34 in Las Vegas against Roxanne Perez, La Hiedra and Faby Apache, with the winner earning a shot at the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship at Worlds Collide.
