Nattie Neidhart reflects on her eventful 2018.
The former SmackDown Live Women's Champion Natalya had quite the 2018 that was filled with ups and downs. She competed in the first-ever Women's Royal Rumble match, the Women's Money In The Bank Ladder match, had a match at WrestleMania 34, her father Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart passed away and a few days after he passed Natalya was present on WWE programming to support Ronda Rousey at SummerSlam and Nattie recently announced herself for the 2019 Women's Royal Rumble match. Nattie talked about all this and more in her latest blog for the Calgary Sun and here's an excerpt from her article:
Undeniably, the last year in WWE has been awesome! I competed at WrestleMania, was in a Money in the Bank ladder match, got drafted to Monday Night Raw, performed in the first all-women?s pay-per-view, Evolution, had a tables match with Ruby Riott, performed in front of thousands of our troops and faced off against Ronda Rousey for the Raw Women?s Championship.
I got to do so many cool things this past year. It?s also been a year of so much personal growth for me. When my dad passed away, I was under a lot of stress with planning a funeral, trying to pick out just the right flowers and pictures and simply trying to find the right way to say goodbye. It just seemed like it was easier for me to not say goodbye at all. That was tough. I think I cried so hard there were times I didn?t feel like I had any tears left inside to cry.
There were moments last year in which I wasn?t sure how I?d get through but I did. In my championship match against Ronda Rousey, I felt overwhelming pressure to be the best. I used that pressure to rise up and have an awesome match with her. I thought about the hard times, and how I made it through those, so I could make it through this. I remember us both being super emotional when we got backstage because we felt like all of our training together had paid off and we finally got to tell a great story in the ring!
To check out Natalya's full blog post, click here, and as mentioned she declared herself for the 2019 Women's Royal Rumble match and to see the list of competitors in both the men's and women's Rumble matches, click here.