Canadian wrestler Neidhart details career, family struggles, and hopes to inspire with new memoir

Nattie Neidhart, or Natalya as fans might know her, has been a staple for World Wrestling Entertainment on and off camera for the past 18 years.

Neidhart, the daughter of former two-time WWE (then WWF) tag-team champion Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, is one of the most recognizable faces of WWE’s women’s division, having made her television debut in 2008. Much like the rest of the legendary Hart wrestling family, she has carved a niche for herself as the no-nonsense, in-ring technician of the division.

After nearly two decades in the promotion, the 43-year-old has written and released a memoir of her life and career – The Last Hart Beating – where she details her introduction to wrestling in her grandfather Stu Hart’s world famous training ground for professional wrestlers, The Dungeon, the emotional and financial strain she and her family endured as her father struggled with the pain and addiction that came from a life in wrestling, and how she emerged from that trauma to become a two-time world champion.

Neidhart says the deeply personal book was a venture that allowed her to tell her story in her own words and branch out from the character she has built on television.

“I just wanted to dive into something that would allow me to feel so much creatively. I love my career in WWE, which is still very much alive and well, but I also recognize that I’d never fully had creative control over my story,” Neidhart told TSN.ca. “I just was at a point in my life where I was signing a new contract with WWE, and I needed to dive into stuff that really charges me in a different way, emotionally, creatively, internally. I wanted to chase big dreams.”

Nattie Neidhart – The Last Hart Beating Nattie Neidhart – The Last Hart Beating

It wasn’t always easy for Neidhart, who was born in and eventually trained in Calgary, Alberta, in the Dungeon, becoming the first woman in the family to venture into pro wrestling. She entered the squared circle with the same mentality as her father, grandfather, and her uncles, Bret and Owen Hart, meaning it was all about work ethic and putting on the best in-ring display possible.

However, at the time of Neidhart’s debut in 2008, hard-hitting technical wrestling was not what WWE was looking for in the women’s division.

“It was all about work, the quality of the wrestling, and so that was instilled in me very early on, that it was about the wrestling,” Neidhart said. “But when I first got to WWE, that wasn’t really what they were looking for in the women, per se. The men, yes.

“But for the women, I wasn’t what they wanted at that time. They were looking for models and dancers, and girls in bikini contests, and I just wasn’t that at all. But I knew that if I wanted any shot at trying to do that to get into WWE, I had to try to meet them at least halfway.”

Eventually, Neidhart found her role as the locker room leader for the women in WWE. The person that others would go to for advice or training, and the wrestler who could always be the dependable ‘star maker’ for the women WWE chose to heavily feature.

In the memoir, Neidhart detailed how an unstable upbringing, created by her father’s struggles with drugs and alcohol, as well as his battle with a brain injury from years in the ring, helped develop her need to take responsibility for the people around her.

“I think because of the things that happened in my childhood, control for me was a big trauma response. My home life was very unstable. My dad was always in and out of trouble, so I was desperately grasping for control in my life,” Neidhart said. “It led me to a Type A personality where, like, I was seeking levels of perfection that weren’t realistic. I wanted to be the perfect student in school. I wanted to have the perfect body, which led me to an eating disorder.

“I’m not gonna make any of the mistakes that my dad made. I’m gonna be perfect, and I’m gonna help everyone. They may not see me as a star, but they’re going to keep me around because I’m going to help make everybody else a star.”

Over the years, Neidhart has had those star-making moments with other women, and moments of her own, winning her first world title, then known as the Divas Championship, in 2010. She won her second title, the SmackDown Women’s Championship, in 2017.

Neidhart had lofty expectations placed on her from the second she entered the ring, as she came from a family of wrestling icons. She admitted that, as the first and only Hart woman to journey into wrestling, she was the least likely to find success.

Harry Smith, Bret Hart, Nattie Neidhart, TJ Wilson Harry Smith, Bret Hart, Nattie Neidhart, TJ Wilson (Nattie Neidhart (@NatbyNature))

Neidhart recalled a conversation she had with her father when she began her wrestling journey, and he told her, “Nobody in our family’s ever beaten the House.”

Over the years, the Hart family has had difficult times in and out of the ring. Stu could hardly walk, Jim suffered from Alzheimer’s and several injuries due to his time in the ring, before dying at 63. Bret had his in-ring career prematurely ended due to a concussion suffered while wrestling for WCW. Her uncle, Davey Boy Smith ‘The British Bulldog’, retired early and died at 39, while, perhaps most famously, Owen fell to his death in the ring after a failed stunt to lower him from the ceiling of the arena.

After 18 years in the wrestling industry, Neidhart realized what her father meant by his words and has since redefined what success means in a historically brutal business.

“After my dad passed away, I realized, holy s—, my dad was right. I will always protect him, but my dad died physically broken and penniless, you know?” Neidhart said. “When I look at my family, I’m the last one still in WWE, still wrestling, and I was the one who wasn’t supposed to make it. I’m gonna make sure that I never leave this business broke or broken.

“When I got to the end of writing the book, I realized what winning is. Winning is not about winning the championships. It’s not about main eventing WrestleMania. For me, what winning is, is being able to look at myself in the mirror and know that nobody’s going to take everything that I have. I feel fulfilled. I love my life. So I feel like I really did beat the House.”

Nearing her 20th year as a professional wrestler, Neidhart says her career is far from done and that she has plenty more to contribute, physically and creatively, to the industry she has dedicated her life to.

By sharing her story with a larger audience, she hopes that her up-and-down life can serve as inspiration to those going through difficult times of their own.

“I believe that my story could be the tool for somebody else’s handbook in survival, whether they love wrestling or they’ve never watched it,” Neidhart said. “I just wanted to share my story and inspire everyone, and let them know that you can’t see the stars without the darkness.

“On the other side of all this trauma, there’s so much hope. For somebody who’s going through something that’s really hard, there’s something good on the other side.”