Five years on from #GiveDivasAChance — why The Bella Twins deserve to be in the WWE Hall of Fame

The announcement that Nikki and Brie Bella are the latest members of the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2020 has been met with a mixed reaction online.

Some fans will argue that The Bella Twins did nothing for women’s wrestling in WWE and they are simply a relic of a bygone era - the Divas era.

But it was only five years ago that fans were campaigning online to #GiveDivasAChance, after a 30-second match that took place on the February 23, 2015 edition of RAW.

You never know what it will take to start a revolution but the match between The Bella Twins and the team of Emma and Paige stirred something inside of WWE fans where they finally had enough of the women’s roster being overlooked.

The outcry on social media was so loud that even Vince McMahon took notice, tweeting two days late, “We hear you. Keep watching. #GiveDivasAChance."

We hear you. Keep watching. #GiveDivasAChance

— Vince McMahon (@VinceMcMahon) February 25, 2015

To put the #GiveDivasAChance movement into context, it came just under two years after the introduction of the NXT Women’s Championship and just over 18 months after the debut of Total Divas on E!.

The emergence of NXT and the contrast between how it chose to present women’s wrestling compared to the main roster cannot be underplayed.

While Paige became the first NXT Women’s Champion, hot on her heels were the Four Horsewomen - Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Bayley and Becky Lynch.

These were women who were not only given match time and presented as athletes but they were also defined characters that fans could relate to and get behind.

But over on the main roster, Divas like The Bellas were working within the constraint of limited TV time, which made getting over a character as impossible as getting fans invested in their rushed matches.

Instead, it was through Total Divas that fans got to learn about the WWE women and, in particular, The Bellas, who quickly became the faces of the show.

It was on Total Divas that fans saw the pain they went through when their WrestleMania 29 match was scrapped.

It was on Total Divas that fans saw the growth of Nikki Bella as a wrestler and as an athlete as she considerably upped her strength and skillset while becoming the longest-reigning Divas Champion in WWE history.

And it was on Total Divas that fans finally saw these women as real people, who were juggling the highs and lows of, not just their careers, but their personal lives as well.

It was the connection that The Bellas built with viewers through Total Divas that led fans to root for not only them but Paige, Naomi, AJ Lee, Alicia Fox, Natalya and all the women who were doing their best working within the system that they were constricted by.

Five years on from #GiveDivasAChance we’ve seen the Divas Revolution turn into the Women’s Evolution and now there are no barriers to what women in WWE can do.

But one casualty that happened along the way is the division that has been created between women like The Bellas, who were the faces of the end of the Divas era, and the women who came after them.

It’s only fitting that The Bella’s Hall of Fame announcement coincided with the fifth anniversary of #GiveDivasAChance because that support is something Nikki and Brie deserve from fans again.

Whether you love them or hate them, I don’t believe women would be where they are in WWE today without The Bella Twins.

They are the bridge that took us from Divas to Women and the ones who showed the world outside of WWE what it meant to be a female wrestler in the modern era.

For all they accomplished and all they paved the way for others to do, Nikki and Brie Bella absolutely deserve their place in the WWE Hall of Fame.