Tag: Ronda Rousey

For Ronda Rousey to go back to WWE, things would need to drastically change within the company.

Rousey recently called WWE an “absolute sh*tshow” and said she had no intention of returning to the promotion. She gave a similar answer while appearing on Monday’s edition of Good Morning America. When asked if she would ever consider going back to WWE, Rousey responded:

Not unless things drastically change with how things are run there, and so I highly doubt it.

The last time Rousey wrestled for WWE was at SummerSlam in August 2023. She had two indie matches and one match for ROH later that year, teaming with her friend Marina Shafir in all of them.

During her Good Morning America appearance, Rousey was asked what made her step away from WWE. Rousey said it wasn’t a lifestyle she could continue while being a mother:

Well, it’s just not a lifestyle that I can continue while being a mom. I was on the road 18 months with my baby and it was just nothing that we could sustain forever.

Rousey had two stints with WWE. The first lasted from 2018-2019, with the second then taking place from 2022-2023. Rousey and husband Travis Browne welcomed the birth of their daughter La’akea Makalapuaokalanipō Browne in 2021.

Today (April 2) is the release date for Rousey’s new memoir “Our Fight.” The UFC Hall of Famer previously released a book titled “My Fight/Your Fight” in 2015.

Becky Lynch says Ronda Rousey was mishandled in WWE. 

During recent media interviews, Rousey has been critical of WWE, stating it’s “an absolute s**t show” and that the company wasn’t willing to work with her on developing a story that would lead to Rousey vs. Lynch at WrestleMania. 

Lynch was asked about Rousey’s comments during an appearance on The MMA Hour on Wednesday and responded:

I have a very different view and a very different experience of WWE. I always wanted to do this. This is what I always wanted to do. I love this. I love this, and is it perfect? No, nothing is. 

She continued:

Stuff like the creative, no, it’s not always great. There’s been a history of it not making sense to me, but nobody’s personally going, ‘How do we make Becky Lynch look awful?’ But they have so much going on, there is so much going on and the fact that we pull everything off the way that we do, and even at a time when notoriously the shows were getting rewritten as we were going live on TV, and we still go them done and we still went out there, we still hit our times and we still made the show work — and no, it was not always great, but a lot of it was all doing the best we can. Nobody wants to go out there and do bad work or make anybody look bad.

Regarding how WWE handled Rousey specifically, however, Lynch believes part of the issue may have been that management had too much confidence in her wrestling ability. 

Lynch said:

She was coming off a different industry. She was a star and she should have been handled differently in terms of — I think she had such a great first outing that everybody thought, ‘Oh, she can wrestle.’ I mean this with respect, but she couldn’t wrestle.

What we do isn’t something that you can just have one good match and then, ‘OK, yeah, I’m off to the races.’ It’s a craft, and you have to learn your craft, and you have to be diligent about learning your craft. But everybody treated Ronda like she already knew it because when she first came in, she was good in that first bout, but she was also working with Kurt Angle, she was working with Triple H, Stephanie McMahon. It was a well-rehearsed match because everybody wanted her to succeed. And then it was, ‘OK, she can do this, off to the races,’ and that was mishandling her because she was a star in her own right and she’d done so much for MMA.

So in terms of that and booking, that wasn’t done well, but my experience coming from nobody thinking that I was going to be worth anything and making myself very valuable to the company and very valuable to wrestling in general, it’s because I loved it. Because I loved it and I sought out to do it. She came in and I think she found a place that she enjoyed, she liked, but she never sought to do it from a young age, and I think that changes the experience you have when you go into a place.

Rousey and Lynch have been doing media rounds of late to promote their upcoming books. Rousey’s “Our Fight” releases on April 2 and Lynch’s “Becky Lynch: The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl” hit bookshelves on March 26. 

Ronda Rousey spoke about her disdain for Vince McMahon in a new interview.

Rousey told Cagesideseats that her frustrations with the company stemmed from the women’s roster not being given the same screen or prep time. 

She said:

The Bloodline is able to plan things out a year ahead of time, and they won’t even talk to me until I get to the arena. About anything.

I proved in my first match that if you give me the time, the resources and preparation, I can put together an amazing match. And I feel like they’re really doing that with Logan Paul and allowing him to rehearse and put these things together and have all these different resources, producers to bring him to his highest potential. And it got to the point where he girls [weren’t] gonna get any of that.

Rousey continued to say she began to feel like she was doing custom matches for a “f—ing sicko in the back.” 

She continued:

I just didn’t wanna be Vince’s action f—-ing figure anymore. I felt like I was like doing custom matches for a f—-ing sicko in the back.

All power to the girls that keep fighting the good fight. But I’m in my mid-30’s now. I’ve got s—t to do.

Rousey also reiterated previous comments she made about Bruce Prichard serving as “Vince’s avatar” when he had supposedly retired from the company. 

Rousey said:

(Vince McMahon) was never gone while I was there. He was just phoning it in through Bruce Pritchard.

My agent who works at WME (Endeavor), he was telling me, ‘You know, he’s completely gone now, I swear.’ And I’m like, I’ll believe it when I see it, because everyone said he left before. He never left. He was there by text message.

Later in the interview, Rousey discussed not having a singles match with Becky Lynch at WrestleMania and what she said to the company regarding her final storylines. 

Rousey said WWE refused to work with her on developing a storyline that would lead to her vs. Lynch at WrestleMania 38 in Dallas. 

She said:

WWE just refused to work with me at all. They refused to collaborate. They didn’t want to talk to me about it. They kept pushing it off and pushing it off until it finally got to the road to WrestleMania, and they’re like, yeah, we’re not gonna do you and Becky.

Rousey continued:

I’m like, ‘Alright, well then I’m f—-ing leaving unless me and Shanya [Baszler] can tag.’

If you guys don’t want to work with me, you don’t wanna do something extraordinary. You just wanna do good enough every single night. I came here to have fun with my friends.

Regarding her decision to leave WWE, Rousey says she told Triple H she couldn’t “be associated with mediocrity.” 

I had a long sit down with Triple H and I was like, ‘I can’t be associated with mediocrity.’ And that’s what they seemed to be happy with at the time. And I hope that is different now, but I can’t say… that I’ve ever experienced it any other way.

However, Rousey was complimentary toward Triple H in the interview. She stated that she wished her final WWE run took place while he was running the company. 

Rousey continued:

Triple H has been great towards the women in the company and really believing in us. He’s the whole reason that I was there, ‘cause he believed in me. I really wish that my last run was under Triple H running things and Vince being gone.

The full interview with Rousey includes her discussing her history of concussions, headlining WrestleMania 35, and more. It’s available here.