During her appearance on the most recent Insights with Chris Van Vliet, Indi Hartwell (real name (Samantha De Martin) revealed how she’s able to keep her in-ring name following her release from WWE.
De Martin said that she has been using the “Indi Hartwell” name since she started on the independent scene in Australia.
On how she is able to keep the “Indi Hartwell” name. Well, said that she sold the name to WWE and then asked WWE is she could have it back. She further noted that the two sides worked figure it all out in order for to keep using it.
“I just asked,” Hartwell responded when asked about keeping her name. “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. And I just asked Road Dogg, like, ‘Can I be Indi Hartwell for this?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll ask. Why not?’ And then they let me be Indi Hartwell for the dark match. And then it kind of just like kept going. And then I got on TV with it. I got my action figure with that name. I got in the game with that name. And then I think it was when NXT 2.0 started, they went through that whole weird thing of like, you have to – 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 like, oh my gosh, if I get released, like what name am I going to be? Like that’s a big deal to me. So then when I got the call that I was being released, they said, ‘Ok, yeah, we’re releasing you.’ I said, ‘Ok, cool, so I sold my name to the company. Is there any way I can get that back?’ And then we got it all figured out. I got the rights and stuff to it.”
Hartwell is currently signed to TNA Wrestling. She made her debut at the Rebellion pay-per-view back on April 27, announcing that she is the newest member of the Knockouts Division. During the interview with Van Vliet, Hartwell also noted she has always been a fan of TNA.
You can watch entire interview below: