Indi Hartwell is still Indi Hartwell.
At TNA Rebellion, Indi Hartwell came forth as a new member of TNA Wrestling‘s Knockouts division — something she described as a “dream come true.” With this news, TNA also confirmed that Hartwell would keep her same ring name, which she had previously used on the independent circuit and in WWE. While appearing on Insight With Chris Van Vilet, Hartwell explained how she was able to do so following her release from WWE last November.
“I just asked,” she said. “Well, this is how it went. So I’ve had this name my whole wrestling career. When I started at NXT, when you start wrestling on live events, they make you wrestle under your real name. So I wrestled under my real name for a bit, and then I think I had a dark match at NXT. I just asked Road Dogg, ‘Can I be Indi Hartwell for this?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll ask. Why not?’ Then they let me be Indi Hartwell for the dark match and then it kind of just kept going. Then I got on TV with it. I got my action figure with that name. I got in the game with that name.
“Then I think it was when NXT 2.0 started, they went through that whole weird thing of you can’t have your real name. You also can’t have a name that we don’t own, so they gave me the option to change my name or sell it to them. So I sold it to them, and then it was always in the back of my mind, if I get released, what name am I going to be? That’s a big deal to me. So then when I got the call that I was being released, they said, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re releasing you.’ I said, ‘Okay, cool. So I sold my name to the company. Is there any way I can get that back?’ Then we got it all figured out. I got the rights and stuff to it. I’m very lucky.”
During her time in WWE, Hartwell claimed the NXT Women’s and NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships before ascending to the company’s main roster in 2023. The Australian star’s last WWE match came on the November 1 episode of SmackDown (pre-taped October 25), the same day as her release. In moving to TNA, she joins a roster with names such as Masha Slamovich, Ash By Elegance (fka WWE’s Dana Brooke), Tasha Steelz, and her fellow Aussie Steph De Lander.
