The Real Ronda Rousey Has Arrived

You’re not going to hear many complaints about Ronda Rousey’s WWE run thus far from me. I, for one, have been tremendously impressed with her work. Right from her first match at WrestleMania 34, she took immediately to pro wrestling like no one that I’ve seen since Kurt Angle back in 1999. Her matches have been at or near the top of the list on every show she’s wrestled on. She’s been Raw Women’s Champion for awhile now and has held the championship with honor. Ronda is more believable than anybody on WWE’s women’s roster and works as hard as anybody.

There’s only been one flaw in her game from what I’ve seen. It’s a strange thing to say, as the one area Ronda’s been weak in is an area she was supremely strong in during her UFC career. One of the main reasons Rousey became that promotion’s top draw was her personality.

It wasn’t a likeable one.

Rousey rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. As dominant as she was on her way up to the top of UFC, it brought a ton of fans joy when she lost her last couple of fights. She came off as being pretty full of herself & rude to people around her. Her language was rough. She didn’t take losing very well. Most people don’t, but her reaction was especially poor.

Rousey’s social media presence also proved problematic. Being a Sandy Hook truther & believing 9/11 was an inside job might be something a public figure might keep to themselves, but not Ronda. She puts it all out there.

If you’ve spent any time on social media at all, you’ve gotten into inane arguments with trolls. Rousey found herself in that situation a few days ago, when she engaged in a Twitter dispute with fellow WWE Superstar Becky Lynch. Becky has become quite the Twitter expert/troll depending on who you ask, and a probably ill-conceived photoshop got Ronda all shook up.

Huh, it *does* look exactly like one now that you mention it. pic.twitter.com/bHZfEGJRPF

— The Man (@BeckyLynchWWE) February 28, 2019

If anything’s going to bring out the Ronda Rousey from her UFC heyday, it’s gotta be implying that her husband is a dick. Rousey is very protective of her family and gets very mad at people that insult them. Sometimes she gets mad at people that don’t really insult her family. It’s a thing. In a cringe-worthy moment, Ronda replied “Rebecca Quin, I don’t care what the script says, I’m beating the living shit out of you the next time I see you.”

A woman of her word

It got a lot of laughs online, but you can’t accuse Ronda Rousey of being a liar. The next time she saw Becky Lynch, she beat the living shit out of her.

For my money, Monday night was the most natural Ronda Rousey has looked & felt since debuting with WWE. She walked through the backstage area at a clip that you wondered how it took her the entire commercial break to get to the entranceway. They must have been in a pretty big arena. Her speech was at a similar rate of speed, as she had about five minutes of material that she went through in one. That’s been a thing with Ronda since she started though. To me, it’s better than Triple H’s promos where he has about five minutes of material and gets through it in ten.

WWE didn’t figure on Ronda engendering hatred from their fanbase. They figured all of her UFC fans would follow her over to WWE, she could feud with Stephanie McMahon as the rebellious babyface, and it would be their new version of Austin vs. McMahon. Stephanie would become this huge mainstream star thanks to feuding with Ronda, it was all going to be good times ahead. Ronda needed to be a nice girl, shake hands, kiss babies and all that stuff that good people do.

The WrestleMania match worked. Then Ronda moved on to the singles division, eventually becoming Raw Women’s Champion, and everything generally went pretty well. It’s not like Ronda even got as much of a backlash from fans as people generally pushed in the “Top face that runs through everybody” slot. She certainly didn’t get booed like Roman Reigns or John Cena did. Ronda named the one time she got booed, at Survivor Series in her hometown of Los Angeles. Apparently one time was enough to set her off.

Good.

Ronda has a short fuse. It doesn’t take much to set her off. Look at her the wrong way and she’ll knock you into next week like she did Becky Lynch. That’s what made her a big deal in UFC, and it’s about time she was allowed to tap into that in WWE. As pretty much everybody has said: the best characters are the ones most like the actual people.

It’s just a shame that she’s going away after WrestleMania. Though one wonders…if they’re ok with having a part-time men’s champion that moonlights with UFC, maybe they’ll keep the belt on Rousey?

Probably not. But I wouldn’t totally rule it out. There’s a lot of money in the real Ronda Rousey, whether she’s around every week or not.