Indi Hartwell Reveals How She Was Able To Keep Her Name Following WWE Release
How Indi Hartwell was able to keep name after WWE release revealed
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May 9, 2025
Indi Hartwell has joined TNA Wrestling after her WWE exit in November 2024, and has surprisingly kept her WWE name in the move.
Hartwell was revealed as the newest member of TNA’s vaunted Knockouts division during the Rebellion pay-per-view in April 2025, and during a talk with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Indi revealed how she was able to keep her moniker:
"I just asked. 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, and 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," said Hartwell.
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