Natalya: ‘I want to wrestle everywhere’

Even with all the respect she’s earned within the pro wrestling industry, Natalya is still determined to prove herself.

The 42-year-old WWE star will make her Game Changer Wrestling debut when she faces Miyu Yamashita at Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport XIII this Thursday. Natalya is then set to make another non-WWE appearance next month when she wrestles at the NWA’s Crockett Cup.

Natalya told Chris Van Vliet on a new episode of Insight that — across Raw, SmackDown, and NXT — there are so many women that she wants to wrestle in WWE. But she would love to wrestle everywhere and test herself against other opponents. Natalya loves that WWE is starting to become more open to things like that. She also loves that talent from across the industry can come train at the Dungeon wrestling gym that she and her husband TJ Wilson (Tyson Kidd) have.

“When I signed my new deal with WWE — I signed it last June — and I thought to myself as long as I continue to stay in WWE, I have to always remember to keep proving myself,” Natalya said. “I can’t just rest on the fact that I have a world record for the most matches, or the most wins, or the most this, or the most that, or that I had a really great match with Charlotte at TakeOver [in 2014]. To me, when you continue to work in WWE, you always have to keep proving yourself no matter what it is that you’re doing, even if you’re not working at WWE.

“So I kind of made that vow to myself that if I want to continue working here, I have to not only prove myself and not only fight to be in this division, but also fight to prove my detractors wrong. And so that’s why I thought about myself wrestling elsewhere. I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder what it would be like. I wonder what it would look like for me to wrestle elsewhere.’ And I want to wrestle everywhere. That’s the thing, I want to wrestle everywhere. That’s what I love about my ring. My ring is really kind of like a forbidden door. The Dungeon that TJ and I have. I love all these different people coming in and just bringing passion, whether it’s Joe Hendry, whether it’s Kevin Knight, whether it’s [Man Like] DeReiss, whether it’s Riho, B-Fab comes in, [Angelo] Dawkins, Apollo [Crews], all these different people come to our ring, whether they’re on the independents, they come from all these different places. And that’s what I want to do. I want to wrestle everywhere. And I love that WWE is starting to do that.”

Natalya feels like, despite all of her accolades, wrestling owes her nothing and she needs to keep earning her spot. Every match she has and every practice she has are opportunities to keep proving herself.

The Insight episode was recorded live in Toronto during Elimination Chamber weekend. In March, it was announced that Natalya has written a memoir called “The Last Hart Beating” that’s scheduled to be published this October.

Bret Hart — Natalya’s uncle — will be honored at the 2025 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony this Friday night with his match against Steve Austin from WrestleMania 13 receiving the inaugural WWE Immortal Moment Award. It’s the first match to ever be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Hart is already in the HOF as an individual and as a tag team with Natalya’s father Jim Neidhart.

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