Childhood & Early Life
Brie Bella was born Brianna Monique Garcia-Colace on November 21, 1983, in San Diego, California, US, to Jon Garcia and Kathy Colace as twin along with Nicole (Nikki). She is a mix of Italian and Mexican descent. She grew up with Nicole on a Scottsdale, Arizona farm.
The twin sisters developed interest in soccer at an early age and played for Scottsdale clubs since their second grade. They completed graduation in 2002 from ‘Chaparral High School’ in Arizona and then moved back to San Diego to pursue college studies.
They then moved to Los Angeles after a year and while looking for an agent sustained themselves as waitresses at the ‘Mondrian Hotel’. Gradually, they started getting modeling and acting assignments apart for promotional jobs.
Brianna made her TV debut along with Nicole in the comedy reality TV series ‘Meet My Folks’. Thereafter, the twins were employed to become World Cup Twins for ‘Budweiser’. Snaps of the two holding the World Cup trophy were taken.
In 2006, the twins took part in the ‘International Body Doubles twins search’. Later that year they took part in the WWE talent competition ‘WWE Diva Search’ but failed to hit the mark.
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Career
In June 2007, the twins signed development contracts with WWE and were delegated to the professional wrestling promotion ‘Florida Championship Wrestling’ (FCW).
Her first in-ring match partnered with Nicole as ‘The Bella Twins’ on September 15, 2007, saw the twins beating Krissy Vaine and Nattie Neidhart. Special guest referee of the match was Victoria Crawford.
All through October 2007 and later in 2008, the twins had several matches pitted against Crawford and Neidhart following their scripted rivalry with the latter duo. Brianna and Nicole would take strategic advantage as twins and change positions without knowledge of referee when any of the two got hurt.
After Neidhart left in April 2008 for WWE roster, the feud continued with Milena Roucka taking the former’s place. The twins also paired with male wrestlers like Robert Anthony and Kofi Kingston to take part in mixed tag team matches.
They last featured in FCW during the Divas battle royal held on September 2, 2008.
Brianna made her WWE SmackDown debut under the ring name Brie Bella on August 29, 2008 and beat Victoria in the match. Soon she started a feud with Victoria and the latter’s associate Natalya and went on to fight in several matches against them.
Interestingly, during every match, at one point of time Brie would go underneath the ring and come out refreshed and eventually win the match. Once in a SmackDown episode when Victoria tried to pull Brie from underneath the ring catching her legs, she was kicked by another pair of legs.
Finally, after winning a match against Victoria when Brie tried to go underneath the ring, Victoria and Natalya pulled out both Brie and Nicole, thus unveiling the strategy of the twins in Brie’s wins. Nicole then got introduced to WWE SmackDown as Nikki Bella.
The twins made their debut in SmackDown as tag team on November 21, 2008 when they beat Victoria and Natalya.
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Their on-screen association with The Colóns comprising Carlito and Primo beginning November 2008 and then with John Morrison and The Miz since February 2009 led the storyline to a split among the twins. This led to a tag team match on SmackDown where Brie along with ‘The Colóns’ beat Nikki, The Miz and Morrison.
On March 31, 2009, the first singles match held between the twins on ECW saw Brie being pinned by Nikki following distractions by The Miz and Morrison.
After ‘The Bella Twins’ were drafted to Raw brand on April 15, 2009, Brie made her Raw debut on April 27 in a tag team match of eight Divas where her team thrived to win. The match again saw Nikki helping Brie from under the ring thus manifesting their reconciliation.
‘The Bella Twins’ were traded to ECW brand on June 29, 2009.
They were traded back to Raw brand as part of tri-divas trade on October 12 2009. The Bellas continued with Twin Magic and started a storyline with Daniel Bryan in November 2010.
On April 11, 2011, Brie emerged as the Divas Champion beating Eve Torres, thus becoming the first of the twins to hold a WWE championship.
She went on to retain her championship fighting against Kelly Kelly after the twins interchanged places in WWE’s pro wrestling pay-per-view event ‘Over the Limit’ in 2011. However, she lost the championship to Kelly on June 20, that year on RAW’s special "Power to the People" episode.
The 2012 ‘Extreme Rules’ saw Nikki losing her Divas Championship, which she won on April 23 that year, to Layla due to failure of Twin Magic.
In a triple threat match the next day, both the twins failed to beat Layla to win the Divas Championship. The website of WWE made an announcement that night intimating that Executive Administrator Eve Torres has fired the twins.
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On March 11, 2013, the twins returned to WWE. From July 28 that year they became part of American reality television series ‘Total Divas’ with other wrestlers like Natalya, Naomi, Cameron and JoJo.
She also remained part of the storyline associating her real-life husband Daniel Bryan, Stephanie McMahon and Kane.
The 2014 ‘Hell in a Cell’ saw Nikki defeating Brie in a match that pre-conditioned the loser to be the personal assistant of the winner for 30 days.
On April 6, 2016, Brie affirmed that due to family reasons she is taking a hiatus from wrestling matches, however would continue to serve as WWE ambassador.
After October 5, 2016, Brie features in the reality TV series ‘Total Bellas’, a spin-off of ‘Total Divas’, as one of the main casts along with husband Daniel Bryan, Nikki and her fiancé wrestler John Cena.
The twins also featured in TV series ‘Ridiculousness’ (2012) and ‘Psych’ (2014); music videos ‘Right Side of the Bed’ (2014), ‘Na Na’ (2014) and ‘Hollywood’ (2017); film ‘Confessions of a Womanizer’ (2014); and gave voice-over in animated film ‘The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown!’ (2015).
