Hey. Hi. Me again. Sorry to interrupt your whole crimmus. I won't be long; just tedious. Despite how that might've read, that was not a hamfisted attempt at doing like a "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" thing. Trust me, it'll be way more hamfisted when I do it on purpose.
So I want to just shout out Natalya Neidhart for a moment. Natalya doesn't get her due. Natalya has been wrestling for 23 years, with the last 15 coming with WWE after signing with the promotion in 2008. She is routinely made the butt of jokes that she's been in WWE for 15 years and despite being here the whole time, never really having much to speak of or show for it. She's constantly spoken about in these really cruel ways, as though having "only" a couple of title holds across that 15-year span makes her career just wallpaper.
You know what Natalya Neidhart has done in that 15 years? She came to work. Natalya Neidhart learned every lesson her mentors had to teach, because you don't stick around at the top level of the business that long if you're not willing to pay attention.
She's gone on to become a mentor herself. In 2023, Natalya might only ever get minor roles onscreen, but you know where she is a leader? Backstage. She's got her locker room on the same page. I read and listen to a lot of wrestling news (clearly, as I'm taking great pains not to quantify it) and hear a ton of drama coming out of both AEW and WWE. In such a political industry, it is remarkable that the WWE women's locker room has gone almost a decade without any major reported strife or division. You think it's the wallpaper in charge of running that tight a ship? Yeah, I don't think it's big egos that are keeping the peace.
Irrelevancy? Tell that to her 75 pay per view appearances. Have most of those been winning efforts? No. But you know why you get a reputation for being everyone's first feud? Because you know your craft well enough you can guide someone much less experienced through it. You hand an up-and-comer their first big W in a blowoff to a couple-month storyline, and you give them that credibility to elevate up the roster, and you might have just made a star out of someone. Natalya Neidhart was there between the ropes doing the work that built the Flairs and the Paiges and the Beckys Lynch up into the icons of the sport. Natalya added an important chapter to dozens and dozens of different stories because she's a damn good worker, and there is tremendous honor in that.
And she did nothing the whole time? First women's two-belt champion. Yeah. Not Becky Lynch. Natalya came up with the Hart dynasty. She trained in the Hart Dungeon. You think they graduate her if she didn't earn it? When your name comes up in conversations with names like Chyna, you have more than earned your accolades. One-half of the Divas of Doom alongside Beth Phoenix. Won the Women's Tag Championship with Tamina–and this is before the belts were cursed! They still had credibility when she won them!
Anyway, I just thought I'd get that off my chest because I think it's shallow, mean, and incredibly unfair to talk that way about someone who has devoted her life to the business. Wrestling is in her. You do not need a lot of runs with the title to prove that you are a credit to the sport. And she is. Natalya has made professional wrestling as a whole demonstrably, meaningfully better for a lot of people in ways for which she cannot immediately receive due credit. We should appreciate someone like that. Thank you, Natalya. I see you.
Okay and yeah elephant in the room I fell off the edge of the Earth trying to do that multi-part series because I'd start one, then get another idea, then think of someone else, and it was like trying to catch an entire swarm of flies at once. That first entry is coming. This year? Shut up. You're not my boss. Don't tell me what to do I like my room messy get out
