Cavinder, Haley, and Hanna are in a complex office outside Orlando, getting a subtle lesson on the art of wrestling promo on an early afternoon.
Ryan Katz, a producer for World Wrestling Entertainment who previously performed as G.Q. Money, encourages the sisters by asking, “How do you anticipate handling the pressure of receiving punches to the face?” He reminds them, “You are accustomed to playing basketball on the court.”
The WWE may have recruited former college athletes, including the Cavinder sisters, to enhance the talent pool of the next generation of athletes in the NCAA. These athletes, who were a mix of rangy hurdlers, hulking linebackers, and charming individuals with a strong social media presence, had the potential to make bank and generate money for themselves. They joined a diverse collection of other college athletes in the Performance Center, where they underwent an hour-long training session and watched aspiring professional wrestlers in action. The Cavinder twins, who had previously helped Miami reach the Elite Eight in the last NCAA women’s basketball tournament, were among the athletes who sat through the morning drills and prepared to begin their journey in Orlando. This is not just a rhetorical question, but a testament to the eclectic and bankable qualities of these athletes.
The Cavinder twins, who have successfully and shrewdly cashed in on both small and big deals in the aftermath of the NCAA’s introduction of its NIL policy in June 2021, have become the poster girls for this new frontier. With a focus on their growing business, they announced that they would forgo their final year of collegiate hoops eligibility and realized that they didn’t even need to be NCAA athletes anymore. Since April, their rise in NIL has been lucrative and swift. They have amassed 4.5 million followers on TikTok, where they regularly post app-sharing and content-sharing videos sponsored alongside nutrition and thirst traps. They have also signed sponsorship deals with a dozen or so companies, earning an estimated $2 million annually. In the midst of the pandemic doldrums, the Cavinder twins have done very well for themselves in cashing in on NIL.
Laughter in the room bursts forth, and Hanna turns to her sister, inquiring, “Haley, do you want to contribute something?” Another moment passes, followed by another. (“My hair has more depth,” she suggests when I inquire about the best way to distinguish them.) Hanna’s blonde hair is tied up in a half ponytail, which is the only noticeable distinction between them today, along with a slight difference in sneaker color. Wearing matching WWE attire, Haley, on her right, mirrors her posture, placing her left hand on her hip, while Hanna handles Katz’s question smoothly. “We have faced pressure our entire lives, so we will certainly adapt,” she states. Being struck in the face, then, would become a completely new professional concern.
We need to uncover the individuals responsible for using the pseudonym of the Cavinder twins. We must find a method to distinguish you from simply being twins. “We should aim to create some substance,” Katz says with optimism. It’s a promising beginning.