‘Total Divas’ Season 9, Episode 8: “35 Years in the Making”
Finally, Total Divas has made it to WrestleMania 35 and all of these women’s hard work gets to be on display on “The Grandest Stage of Them All.” Well, not just “The Grandest Stage of Them All.” There’s a whole week of WrestleMania activities and appearances, after all. They call it “WrestleMania Week,” and this particular week saw Trinity (WWE’s Naomi) signing autographs with Baron Corbin, Sonya Deville meeting a young girl at Axxess who was inspired by her to get into MMA, and Ronda Rousey at a Make-A-Wish event with Braun Strowman.
As we learn early on, Natalya brought her mother, sisters, and 35 other family members (the Hart family runs deep, you know) to see her father, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, be posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame as part of the Hart Foundation. And heading into this week, Trin, Sonya (and Mandy Rose), and Carmella all learned that they would be competing in the annual women’s battle royal. While Sonya was still bummed her storyline with Mandy got scrapped, she was grateful she even got a match at all. And Carmella had been worried that she’d be spending the whole event wandering around backstage.
Nikki and Brie Bella were also around for WrestleMania Week, but they were especially excited that they technically got to be there as fans, without the stress everyone else was experiencing. (Unlike everyone else, they were given the luxury of only one appearance a day.) However, Nikki was still hoping and praying that she’d be able to come back and wrestler again in the future. She and Brie talked about how they’d always wanted to win tag titles, but they didn’t exist for the women until now…. and also, they just retired. Later, Nikki revealed to Brie that she’d contacted WWE and they’d been interested in The Bellas returning to be the next challengers to whoever came out of WrestleMania as WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions. It would be a two pay-per-view deal to help make the titles mean something. Brie’s response?
“You’re retired, right?”
Nikki asked her, “What does that word mean even mean in this business?” Which, true. But Brie also brought up how she and Bryan were trying for baby #2, and she’d have to talk to him about it to see if he’d be okay with her making another comeback. Because that happened the first time—delaying getting pregnant because of her work in WWE.
Then it was time for the WWE Hall of Fame. Sonya had a custom suit maker make her a tuxedo, but the issue was that she couldn’t walk in heels. (I understand, Sonya.) And Natalya—who also sweetly gave Sonya a rainbow handkerchief for a pocket square—was excited to give her speech alongside her uncle Bret Hart. Of course, Natalya was worried that Bret’s speech would go on too long and she wouldn’t be able to speak, and he definitely wasn’t going to cut it down.
And then the incident occurred during the speech.
After the incident, Bret even cracked a joke about it, and then Natalya gave her speech and killed it.
And then, it was time for WrestleMania. And you know how that went down.
“For 35 years, WrestleMania has been headlined by men. And it’s time for the women to be able to show that they can stand on ‘The Grandest Stage of Them All’ and pull numbers just as well or better than the men.”
And Ronda did, alongside Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair. But she also broke her hand in the process, which is where the episode ended.