Nikki Garcia briefly dipped her toe back into the dating pool after divorcing Artem Chigvintsev — but had a good reason for quickly hitting the pause button.
During the Monday, June 30, episode of their “The Nikki & Brie Show” podcast, Brie Garcia asked her twin sister, 41, and their guest, Charlotte Flair, “Are we dating?” since both women are recently divorced.
“Brie knows this, I did a few,” Nikki said. Brie, 41, chimed in, “Like, you did a few dates?” or, “You did a few men? What are we talking about?”
Nikki rolled her eyes and started to laugh, saying, “Yeah,” she’s been on dates since finalizing her divorce from Chigvintsev, 43, in November 2024. Nikki played coy about her sister’s second question, replying, “OK. Whatever you want to call it.”
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Nikki, who shares 4-year-old son Matteo with Chigvintsev, explained that being a mom has slowed down her desire to date.
“At his age right now I get so much love that I realized this is all the love I need and want right now,” Nikki said. “So after having, like, a few dates and, you know ,[I] wasn’t crazy about [them] that I was like, ‘Ah I’m not even going to waste time and energy, like, I’m just too tired.’”
Flair (real name Ashley Elizabeth Fliehr), who finalized her divorce from Andrade El Idolo in October 2024, revealed that even though she doesn’t have kids she’s not interested in finding romance if the process includes using an app.
“I haven’t been on a dating app since my divorce was final,” she told Nikki and Brie. “I’d rather meet the old-fashioned way.”
Both Nikki and Flair confessed that they are happy with the “dating yourself” philosophy.
“You have to date yourself and you can’t love anything else in life till you love yourself first,” Nikki explained. “And you have to do the work on yourself.”
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Brie, who is married to Bryan Danielson, applauded both women, noting that their growth is evident.
“It’s always amazing to me when I see divorces happen and I see the people who glow. The people who seem happier, who are living their best life,” Brie shared. “You both are glowing, and I feel like you both are in your best eras. You guys both look incredible. I see the happiness. I feel it.”
Despite being on board with Nikki and Flair’s single-life eras, Nikki said Brie is always “pushing me more” to date again.
Brie noted that since Nikki and Flair, 39, were recently in New York City for Fanatics Fest they had to have seen handsome men that caught their attention.
“Don’t get me wrong, there were so many good-looking men there,” Nikki said, while Flair played coy about whether anyone piqued her interest.
Nikki met Chigvintsev while partnering on Dancing With the Stars and they began dating in early 2019. The pair secretly got engaged that November and welcomed Matteo in July 2020. Nikki married Chigvintsev in August 2022.
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Us Weekly confirmed in September 2024 that Nikki filed for divorce after Chigvintsev was arrested for alleged domestic violence that month. The charges against Chigvintsev were later dropped and he and Nikki finalized their divorce two months later.
Flair, for her part, has been married three times. She and Riki Johnson were married from 2010 to 2013, while the female wrestler was married to Thomas Latimer from 2013 to 2015. Flair began dating wrestler El Idolo (real name Manuel Alfonso Andrade Oropeza) in 2019 and they were engaged the following year.
Flair wed El Idolo in May 2022 and two years later she filed for divorce in June 2024. The divorce was finalized in October of that year.
