Indi Hartwell opened up about how she was able to keep her in-ring name after being released from WWE during a recent in-depth interview on the popular INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet podcast.
Hartwell, whose real name is Samantha De Martin, has used “Indi Hartwell” since the start of her wrestling career in Australia. She revealed that although she sold the rights to WWE during her time there, she was able to reclaim the name after her departure.
“I just asked,” Hartwell said when discussing how she kept the 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 expressed how thankful she is to have her name back, saying it made things much easier during her post-WWE transition, especially since “Indi” is how most fans know her.
Following her WWE release in November 2024, Hartwell returned to the independent scene this past March. She recently signed with TNA Wrestling and debuted at Rebellion on April 27 as the newest addition to the Knockouts division.
Now 28, Hartwell told Van Vliet she’s always been a longtime fan of TNA and has her eyes on the Knockouts World Championship, currently held by Masha Slamovich. While she’s not ruling out a WWE return in the future, her current focus is on making her mark in TNA.
