How Hooters helped Bella Twins prepare for WWE stardom
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There are a lot of ways to prepare for a career in professional wrestling, but there’s one occupation that you probably wouldn’t think of: Hooters waitress.
That is the job that Nikki and Brie Garcia, who wrestled in WWE as the Bella Twins, said helped them get ready for a career taking bumps in the squared circle.
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In an interview with the New York Post this week, the twins said that their time working for the restaurant chain’s Mission Valley location in San Diego gave them a boost when it came time to lace up their boots.
“Working there, you really owned your feminine energy. As a waitress, you have to have confidence to go up to strangers and talk. But we had to have thick skin and not only confidence, but you had to own it,” Brie said, noting her and Nikki were 19 when they took the jobs.
“You’re going up to men who are excited and want to get crazy. So we knew how to keep them in line … and we all set boundaries for ourselves … and didn’t take any crap from our customers. So it really taught me at a young age just to stand up for myself and to own it, own the room and own a table. And I think it really helped me with pro wrestling to take that attitude into that.”
The brunette beauties, now 40, also revealed their tricks for upselling to their male clientele.
“Squeezing your cleavage. You’d be like, ‘Do you want more fries with that?’” Nikki said.
“Yeah, we got really creative. Like with the lingo, even just saying, ‘I hope you had a Hooter-fic time,’” Brie added. “You just came up with this really cheeky verbiage as waitresses there. And let’s be honest, everyone loves seeing the Hooters girls doing the YMCA and hula hoop — tips were going up.”
The twins, who were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2021, are on a tour of their podcast The Nikki & Brie Show, in which the Garcias get “really real and raw” with their “army” of fans.
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