Nikki Bella Announces Wrestling Retirement on 'Total Bellas' Season Finale

During the season finale of Total Bellas on Sunday evening, Nikki Bella announced that she is [...]

During the season finale of Total Bellas on Sunday evening, Nikki Bella announced that she is retiring from wrestling moving forward.

Bella's final match occurred last fall at WWE Evolution when she lost to WWE RAW Women's Champion Ronda Rousey. She said during Sunday's episode that she is retiring to concentrate on her own business ventures. She made the announcement to her family during a dinner where she was reflecting and questioning why she was still wrestling, noting her body didn't feel good and she was stressing about being away from her other businesses.

While Nikki's final match happened at Evolution, she wrestled several times in the days prior to that show during a WWE European tour. She noted it was during that tour when she started having regrets about continuing to wrestle.

"The [European] tour was good but I just feel like I'm too old for that travel," Nikki said. "That travel was really, really rough. So I realized, I was like, 'Why am I doing this anymore?' I don't feel good and the girls are doing amazing things over there. I really am ready to hang up the jersey. Being on the European tour, I've had a lot of time to think. Just how my body feels, being away from my company, how time consuming this is. It's making me realize I'm ready to fold the jersey and put it away. I'm ready to put the kicks aside and I'm ready to take Nikki Bella into a different direction."
(H/T to Fightful for the quote)

Nikki's announcement follows her sister Brie making her own announcement that she was retiring from wrestling back on the March 10th episode of the show. That announcement also followed the WWE Evolution PPV event.

Finally, the Bellas have announced that they are starting their own podcast. The first episode will be released this Wednesday wherever podcasts are found. It will be titled The Bellas Podcast.

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