Love, Loss and Drama: 10 Bombshells From Nikki and Brie Bella’s Tell-All Book ‘Incomparable’ 

Not So Similar

One major thing the sisters hope readers take away from their life story is they’re not so alike after all. “Being identical twins … you just see us as so identical and so alike,” Nikki explained during an appearance with Brie on Good Morning America on May 4. “And, I think the reality show [Total Bellas] has definitely helped with that, seeing our individual personalities. But, in the book, you read from a very young age — even when I was reading Brie’s story, Brie’s chapters — I realized how different we were. And, how at a young age we … looked at situations differently. I wish I had more boundaries like Brie did as a little girl, and I never had that growing up. And so, it is crazy how we took life so differently.”

Rough Time in High School

Nikki recounted a time she was bullied in high school after someone took a picture up her skirt. “It was horrible,” she said about the photo being passed around the halls. “The whole idea was invasive and mortifying on its own, but the photo was also distorted, and I had an ingrown hair on the bottom of my butt cheek which looked massive and red because of the angle. I felt so violated, so humiliated.”

Nikki’s Sexual Assault

The former Dancing With the Stars contestant detailed being raped twice before the age of 16. The first time happened at a hotel party on the Fourth of July. “My virginity was stolen from me, without my consent. I was raped, by a guy I thought was a friend, while I was passed out at a party,” she said. “I’d had too many beers, and maybe some shots of hard alcohol, and I only woke up because my stomach hurt — I came to, and this guy was both on top of me and inside of me. I pushed him off and ran out of the room — he followed me down the hall and asked me if this meant we were now boyfriend/ girlfriend. … I had never even seen a penis, yet I was no longer a virgin.”

A few months later, Nikki said she “had clearly been roofied” after she and friend were invited to a guys’ hotel room while they were at a modeling competition. The guys pushed Nikki to drink alcohol until she finally agreed. “I thought that if I gave in on this, maybe they’d leave me alone. I hadn’t drunk very much before I felt really dizzy and stood up to go to the bathroom, thinking I might vomit,” she recalled. “One of the guys followed me in and bashed my head against the bathroom sink — I came to when he accidentally switched on the blow-dryer with his elbow … I was groggy, and I couldn’t see straight, but I could see four condom wrappers littered across the bathroom floor and realized that I had been raped.” She continued, “I hit him in the face and ran from the bathroom — my friend was gone and the door was open. I took off into the night, sprinting across empty fields until I made it back to the hotel where we were staying with her mom.”

Nikki kept the horrific story from Brie for a long time, and her mom is “learning about this for the first time in this book.”

Nikki’s First Marriage

Nikki is currently engaged to Dancing With the Stars pro Artem Chigvintsev, but this won’t be her first walk down the aisle. She got hitched in Las Vegas at 20 to her first love after “someone planted it in our heads that if we were married he wouldn’t be sent abroad to serve.”

The starlet knew the decision was a bit crazy. “I was in a sweatshirt, Uggs, my hair up in a messy bun — it was very Britney Spears. As I walked down the aisle, I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing and how do I get out of this?’” Nikki dished about the moment. “He ended up being shipped off to war despite our marriage certificate. That happened when we weren’t actually together as a couple anymore and were dating other people, which I think I used as justification for asking him for a divorce when he was away. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have waited until he came home to ask him to let me go. I definitely owed him that, even though I ultimately knew that our attachment wasn’t healthy and our relationship wasn’t good for either of us anymore.”

Before John Cena …

John Cena isn’t the first pro wrestler Nikki was romantically involved with. She recounted her romance with another WWE dude, who she calls Brad. “We started sleeping together, though that did not deter him from openly and aggressively flirting with other girls. Our relationship was casual, and I certainly had no claims on him, but it drove me crazy anyway,” the starlet said. “It was the first time that I had been with a guy who wasn’t clamoring to lock me down. It drove me bats–t crazy. It made me obsessed with him.” The pair eventually fell into a routine. “We had a really good year together where we settled into what felt like an adult relationship. We didn’t tell each other that we loved each other, we rarely held hands, but it felt like we were together — at least while we were on the road with WWE,” she added.

Their relationship came to an end when she saw messages between him and another wrestler on his Myspace. “There was a rule that was so sacred it didn’t even need to be spoken: We did not sleep with other wrestlers. Not only had he slept with another wrestler, but he had slept with a wrestler who happened to be one of my closest friends, who knew about my feelings for him. It was an undeniable betrayal,” Nikki said. “I used to go out to dinner with both of them, while this whole drama was unfolding behind my back. He claims it only happened once or twice — but even that was two times too many. She called me repeatedly and left voicemails, but we never spoke again.”

Brie’s First ‘I Love You’ From Husband Bryan

Brie and Bryan Danielson got married in 2014, shortly after the first time he dropped the L-bomb. “It was really not my intent to date a wrestler, primarily because when you inevitably break up, you still have to see each other at work all week and then you’ll likely see them with the next wrestler they happen to get involved with,” Brie explained and added that her relationship with Bryan was “inevitable” from the beginning. 

“My now-husband didn’t tell me he loved me until the day he proposed. He had warned me in our early days of dating that he wouldn’t say it,” she explained. “He had only ever told two people he loved them: his mom, Betty, and his sister, Billie Sue. I thought it was a funny thing to say at the time. It was so very Bryan, who loves making rules and then actually sticking to them. I didn’t think it was a big deal, because I honestly didn’t think we’d ever be serious enough to say it.”

Struggles After Birdie

Brie and Bryan hit a rough patch after the birth of their daughter Birdie in 2017. “I know I can’t take care of Birdie alone, and I certainly can’t take care of Birdie and myself alone. I need help and support, like all women everywhere,” Brie wrote. “I struggled, and Bryan struggled, too. In retrospect, I think he had postpartum depression. It is actually not uncommon among men — even though it is rarely discussed. I had been on a nine-month physical journey of connecting with Birdie: My body was transforming to accommodate her, in real time. He had nothing physical to attach to — he just had books, and he read a lot of them. But no book can prepare you for the real thing — for this tiny, needy creature who has wants and needs that you have to learn on the fly.”

Odd Ones Out

The sisters detail their time starting out in the WWE. “Since we all work as independent contractors for WWE, there is no HR,” Nikki explained while noting there were “nonsensical rules and rituals” created by the other athletes. The pair felt like they were “walking on eggshells,” while waiting to get “initiated” by the other performers. 

“There was also no office to report things to, and issues were settled in ‘locker room meetings.’ These were unofficial. I don’t think the office even knew that this sort of thing happened, but a locker room meeting involved a number of female wrestlers marshaling against another wrestler,” Nikki and Bella recalled. “A year into our time on the main roster, there was a locker room meeting held against me, Brie and Nattie [Neidhart].” The others were mad at the twins for getting more time on TV, which they had no control over, while they felt like Nattie was “annoying.” The Arizona natives continued, “They also felt like we had formed too many friendships with the guys. We liked hanging with them, particularly because there was way less drama. So we didn’t feel like giving that up, either. We took it, and put our heads down, and kept going.”

Surprising Coworker

Brie unexpectedly worked with Freddie Prinze Jr. when she first started out in the WWE. The now A-list actor was Brie’s writer and “a fount of positivity,” the brunette beauty gushed. “He was so encouraging and just kept telling me, ‘You got this,’ on repeat until I could say it back to him,” she wrote. “In his non-acting life, Freddie is a crazy wrestling fan — working with him on our debut just made the whole thing even more surreal.”  

A Tough Upbringing

The twins recount growing up with their father, who had a temper. “A lot of what happened to us was borderline acceptable hotly debated but not officially labeled as abuse,” they said. “It was certainly not nearly as stigmatized as it is now. As we grew older and started going to friends’ houses for playdates and sleepovers, the difference between our own home and how our friends were raised became starker,” Nikki wrote. “We never knew what would cause our dad to fly off the handle — it wouldn’t take much, some- times just a day that was too hot — but he would get worked up and angry to the point of blacking out.”

The sisters recounted some “massive” fights that went down in their house, including their dad hitting “Nicole in the face” while Brie “jumped on his back to stop him.” They both were thrown out of the house in the pajamas and “crashed” at their friend Tammy’s house for a few days, “until her parents got suspicious and called [their] mom.”

How It Ended

Everything came to a head with their father after Nikki ran away from home. Her parents called the police and the athlete spilled everything about her dad’s actions. “I told them my story and asked them to call the school, to have them vouch for my dad’s history of getting physical with us. And I had taken a photo of my face after he had hit me,” she said. “Teachers and security guards at the school had seen things over the years — once, my dad and I got into it when he was dropping me off, and he threw a box of Kleenex at my head. A security guard came up to the truck and got in my dad’s face about it.”

Nikki standing up for herself was the catalyst to her parents splitting. “I told the cops I would rather go to juvie than go home to live with my dad again, and they believed me. My mom realized it was over,” she explained. “She needed to kick my dad out of the house so I could come home, though she was still upset that I had made the decision for her. I came home and immediately started throwing all of my dad’s s–t into the driveway.”