Natalya Says Her Father Didn't Want Her To Wrestle, Talks Owen Hart's Passing

20/09/2024 23:36

Natalya was a recent guest on the “Growing Up Erich” podcast to discuss a variety of topics, including her late father Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart trying to keep her away from the wrestling industry and the family's reaction to Owen Hart's death.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On her father not wanting her or her sisters to wrestle: "My dad didn't really want us being wrestlers. Back in the '80s there wasn't really that many women wrestlers. There was like Sensational Sherri [Martel], and Miss Elizabeth … it was more women like Luna Vachon, and there was valets, but it just was more of a man's world."

On getting the itch to wrestle as a teen: "As I became a teenager and women's wrestling became more prevalent and we started seeing Trish Stratus, and Lita, and all these different women in WWE, then all of sudden I kind of got the itch. When I was sixteen, I was watching Trish and Lita, and I was like, 'I wanna do this' … So, I ended up going to The Dungeon which is where my grandfather — he would train people in The Dungeon, and I had one practice session in there and I was just hooked. I had so much fun, and I was like the only girl in our family to wrestle."

On Stu Hart not wanting her to wrestle: "No girls were allowed to wrestle. He was very traditional, and he didn't want the women in the family wrestling."

On Owen Hart's passing: "It was just such a hard time for our family. I mean, there's a million different emotions that we had. … And it's funny because the building that we were in last night for Monday Night Raw, that was the building that my family performed in, in 1997 for a pay-per-view for WWE called In Your House. And it was really the last time my family was all together. And I was saying to Bret last night at Monday Night Raw, I was like, this building brings back so many emotions because that was the last time Owen and Bret and my dad and Davey, that was the last time we were all together.

"I still think to this day, it'd be so cool if Owen was still here and we could, you know, he could help me or we could talk about wrestling. For me, I think it's so important to keep our family legacy alive. Because everything that my grandfather started, I want to be able to keep that moving, keep people remembering it."

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