Nikki Bella, sidelined since March 27 by an ankle injury suffered during a SmackDown tag team match, said she could be back wrestling by the end of June.
Bella injured the ankle in a tag match alongside her sister, Brie Bella, against Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss and has not competed since. The injury kept her out of the fatal four-way contest for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania 42 in April — a match that would have been her first WrestleMania appearance since 2017.
At WrestleMania 42 Bella reached the entrance ramp in a walking boot beside Brie and introduced Paige as the replacement. Paige then stepped into her first WWE match in nearly 10 years and, teaming with Brie Bella, won the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship.
By the time of Bella's comments she had been sidelined for two months. That gap, she said, makes any return conditional: she won’t commit until her ankle is re-evaluated in June and until the supporting muscles regain strength.
Speaking about the recovery process, Bella emphasized how unpredictable injuries can be and that she prefers to wait for a proper check in June rather than guess. She added that while a late-June comeback would be ‘‘incredible’’ in her mind, she does not want to return too early because reinjury often follows when strength on the injured side hasn’t caught up.
The friction is immediate: Bella has set an aspirational timeline — end of June — while also laying out reasons she might miss it. She acknowledged the medical checkpoint in June will determine whether that hope becomes a plan, and she stressed the need to rebuild calves, quads and glutes before taking another match.
Those details explain why WrestleMania required a last-minute change and why the company turned to Paige. Bella’s absence transformed what would have been her first Mania match since 2017 into a title-winning moment for Brie and Paige, and it left Bella watching from the ramp in a boot rather than from inside the ring.
The immediate consequence for fans and the tag division is straightforward: Bella’s return date is now tethered to a two-part test — how the ankle looks in June and whether her lower-body strength meets the standards she set for herself. If both arrive in her favor, she has said she hopes to be cleared in time for a late-June return; if not, she intends to delay until the balance of strength and healing is secure.
Given Bella’s insistence that she will not rush back and her explicit timeline hinge on a June evaluation, the most likely outcome is cautious optimism: a possible late-June comeback only if medical checks and rehab milestones are met. Otherwise, she will remain sidelined until the ankle and surrounding musculature reach the parity she says is necessary to avoid reinjury.
For now, Brie Bella remains the visible half of the team in the ring, Paige holds the tag titles alongside her, and Nikki Bella’s return rests on a single deliverable that she has made central to the decision — what her ankle looks like in June.
