TORONTO — Nattie Neidhart has been a hero and a villain in the wrestling ring but now she wants to be an inspiration.
That’s why she wrote “The Last Hart Beating,” a memoir about her life as the daughter of Hall of Fame wrestler Jim “the Anvil” Neidhart and about her own ongoing career as a two-time singles champion in World Wrestling Entertainment. She said that she wrote the book so it would be accessible to serious wrestling fans and newbies alike because she hoped that readers would see themselves in her story.
“I want people to look at themselves in the mirror, whether they like wrestling, they understand it,” said Neidhart in a downtown Toronto office. “Whatever it is that they’re aspiring to be in their life, I want them to ask themselves, if you’ve got a dream and you chase it with every single thing that you have, then why not you? Why can’t you?
“There’s so many people in the world with half of our talent, half of our ability, half of our work ethic, that are just chasing their dreams because they have the courage to do it. They’ve got the balls to do it.”
The 43-year-old Neidhart is the longest tenured women’s professional wrestler in WWE history, approaching 19 years with the New York-based promotion. She’s a former Divas Champion, SmackDown Women’s Champion, and Women’s Tag Team Champion. She’s also set six Guinness World Records, all based around her longevity in the ring.
Neidhart is also a member of the famous Hart family, of Calgary, with her uncles Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart, Owen Hart and ‘The British Bulldog’ Davey Boy Smith among the biggest names in wrestling in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the book she details growing up in a household where larger-than-life personalities like Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, “Ravishing” Rick Rude and “The Macho Man” Randy Savage were regular guests.
But she also digs into how the tragedies that have dogged her family, like the infamous “Montreal Screwjob” where her uncle Bret Hart was betrayed by then-WWE owner Vince McMahon, her father Jim Neidhart’s issues with concussions and substance abuse, her uncle Owen Hart’s shocking death at a live event, and the in-ring accident where her husband TJ Wilson, formerly known as Tyson Kidd, broke his neck and ended his career as a professional wrestler.
“Who wants to read a book that’s just sunshine and rainbows and butterflies and roses? That’s not real life,” said Neidhart. “My real life has ups and downs and highs and lows and everything in between.
“But if I’m deciding that I’m going to write a book and I’m not going to share those hard times and not really be raw and vulnerable and emotional and real, then I shouldn’t do the book.”
Neidhart said that when weighing how deep to go into her life she asked her uncle Bret Hart — who wrote his own memoir in 2007 — for advice.
“I told Bret ‘I’m just struggling with these chapters. I just don’t know if it’s the right thing to do to talk about it. I don’t want to piss somebody off. I don’t want to have this person mad at me,'” said Neidhart, who also wrote in the book about her people-pleasing tendencies. “Bret said ‘Nattie, you know how to carry yourself. Write the book for you. Write the story for you, and you can’t go wrong.’
“It just was very liberating to be able to go, ‘this is my book. This is my story.'” I think the biggest thing in talking about the hard chapters is that there’s hope on the other side. (…) on the other side of that sadness and that trauma, there’s a really positive ending to it, but you can’t experience good unless you experience bad.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2025.
John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press
