To promote the premiere of season 3 of Total Divas in the UK, WWE Diva Natalya was asked quite a bit about her rivalry with Charlotte. In both interviews, Nattie discusses her classic match with Charlotte, and the RAW match from 2 weeks ago.
It’s been four years since you’ve been Divas Champion. Is that disappointing? Many fans feel you are underappreciated.
The most powerful things I’ve done in WWE have not involved the championship. Going to Rwanda, I visited refugee camps with over 30,000 refugees through United Nations – that was powerful. Last week, I was in Cleveland, Ohio, I visited a children’s hospital for kids with cancer – that was powerful. We went there and made them feel happy even if it was for a few minutes. Being able to help my parents in their hour of need, or give someone advice, or elevate somebody like [WWE NXT Diva] Charlotte Flair. Charlotte Flair, a couple of years ago went through something tragic in her family – she lost her brother – and my heart went out to her, and still goes out to her and her family. For me to be able to have a match with her at NXT Takeover in May, being able to make her feel happiness, and for her and her father Ric Flair to reconnect, it was just powerful. It was more powerful than winning the Divas Championship.
Your NXT Women’s Championship match with Charlotte was really well received. How proud are you of that moment?
It was my WrestleMania moment. It brought my uncle Bret Hart and Ric Flair together, they’d been very estranged, they didn’t get along for a long time, so it was that moment that brought them together again. It united two families.
The way Charlotte and her dad connected before the match, after the match, during the match – I get goosebumps talking about it because I know what they’ve been through. I don’t know exactly, but I can understand and sympathise with what they’ve been through.
I know what it’s like growing up in the wrestling business and Charlotte, her dad’s a 16-time World Champion, but you know there’s been darkness there too, they’ve been through a lot, so to see her and her dad come together and to share tears with them and know we put together this masterpiece, it was powerful. I could have cared less if there was a championship involved or not, it was about what we felt being in the ring together.
Some fans were critical of Charlotte losing to you in such a short amount of time on Raw recently…
We don’t control a lot of things in WWE, it’s live TV, you can’t control how long you’re going to get. Sometimes you’re going to get 20 minutes and sometimes you’re going to get 20 seconds, you just have to maximise those minutes and do the best you can.
I’m happy we got a couple of minutes to showcase something – it’s better than nothing. Would I loved to have had the same kind of match we had at Takeover on Raw? Yes. But I don’t control that. It was a way for Takeover to be promoted a little bit. They’d done that with the pay per view prior to this.
In a perfect world, I’d take 25 minutes with Charlotte, but it turned out to be two and guess what? Because I beat Charlotte in two minutes, it’s only meaningful we’d have a rematch – and we better have a rematch because I plan on evening out the odds and beating her and taking her championship from her! Read the rest of this entry