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After this weekend’s WWE Royal Rumble event, all the talk was about one person – not Shinsuke Nakamura, who won the men’s Rumble, nor Asuka, who won the women’s equivalent. Instead, all the press went to former UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, who was announced as signing a long-term deal with WWE to enter the squared circle.
Rousey isn’t the first crossover from MMA to the scripted world of WWE – Brock Lesnar is obviously the most famous, although he started life in WWE, other notable fighters such as Rampage Jackson, Don Frye and Tito Ortiz have dabbled in pro-wrestling too. But how will Rousey find life in WWE? Will she succeed or fail? The likelihood is she’ll succeed, and here are five reasons why.
#1 The Lesnar Effect
While Brock Lesnar was undoubtedly a big name in WWE when he first rose to fame there in the early 2000’s, he wasn’t exactly one of the biggest drawing superstars that Vince McMahon’s promotion had ever produced. But when he returned from his stint in the UFC in 2012, he instantly became one of the biggest stars that the world of pro-wrestling had ever seen, drawing massive buy rates and sparking fan attention like few others. Why was this?
Well, basically, being seen as a legitimate fighter gave Brock an added aura that he’d never had before. While he’d lost his final two UFC fights before leaving MMA, he was still widely recognized as one of the baddest men on the planet. Sound like Rousey at all? It’s practically the same story – a dominant former UFC champ (and if anything, Ronda was more dominant than Lesnar) coming to the WWE instantly holds a totally different aura to the lifelong pro-wrestlers currently in the promotion.
Even though WWE fans would probably frown upon it, it’d be perfectly natural to have Rousey simply destroy anyone matched with her in the squared circle based on her former UFC career. Everyone knows she’s as legitimate as it gets – even after those losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes – and so we can expect WWE fans to treat her as a ridiculously big deal, far beyond any female star that the promotion’s ever had before. Which means more subs to the WWE Network and more money rolling into Vince McMahon’s pockets.
#2 She’s a lifelong fan
It’s a well-known fact that many professional MMA fighters look down upon pro-wrestling as it’s not a “legitimate” sport, instead favoring heavily scripted storylines, matches, and action. While many smarter fighters would clearly see – and embrace – the link between the two attractions, and use pro-wrestling tropes like trash-talk and portraying a larger-than-life character to their advantage, there aren’t all that many fighters out there who openly admit to being fans of WWE.
That’s where Rousey is different. She’s been completely open about her fandom of WWE, going as far as to ask WWE legend Roddy Piper for his permission to use his infamous ‘Rowdy’ nickname, calling her group of training partners the ‘Four Horsewomen’ in reference to Ric Flair’s successful pro-wrestling stable, and appearing at Wrestlemania 31 in 2015 in a skit involving Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and The Rock.
If anything, Ronda has shown a willingness to embrace the fascinating world of pro-wrestling even more than a handful of successful wrestlers of the past like Bill Goldberg, for instance. This means that she’s in good stead to succeed in WWE from the off – not only does she respect the business, but the other members of WWE’s roster will likely respect her too. And if anything can help someone succeed in the world of WWE, it’s gaining the respect of their peers.
#3 She’s a grappler, not a striker
Despite owning three knockouts over top-ranked opposition – Sara McMann, Alexis Davis, and Bethe Correia – any UFC fan worth a dime would be happy to state that Ronda Rousey is a far better grappler than a striker. After all, it was her insane judo skills and submissions that allowed her so much success in the first place, and it was when she started to rely more on her limited striking that she was finally beaten, first by Holly Holm and then by Amanda Nunes.
Why’s this so important for her WWE career? Well, it means that her best skills should translate far more easily into a pro-wrestling career. Ronda’s grappling background is far more suited to the world of WWE than a striking background would be, as it’d take a hell of a lot of work for an accomplished kickboxer to learn the nuances of the scripted wrestling style – how to pull punches and kicks correctly without hurting the opposition, for instance.
In the case of Rousey, though, her array of judo throws and submissions should fit right into WWE’s high-action style. Other WWE superstars use a submission-heavy style – Charlotte Flair, Asuka and Sasha Banks all use submission moves to finish their matches – but Ronda’s more realistic, MMA-based style would be something different entirely. And due to her talent, I can’t see her finding it too hard to translate her grappling from the real world of MMA to the scripted world of WWE.
#4 It’s the best time for women in WWE
It’s likely that Ronda Rousey would’ve been pushed as a major star in WWE regardless of the time she made the move – after all, she’s been one of the UFC’s most bankable stars over the past few years and has drawn some of the biggest pay-per-view buy rates in UFC history with her headlining fights. But thankfully for Ronda, she isn’t coming into a WWE that’s based solely on male stars anymore.
The past year or so has seen WWE make a massive effort to portray women’s wrestling in a positive light never seen inside the promotion before – if anything, the female athletes on the roster are almost portrayed today as being equal to their male counterparts. It’s a far cry from just over a decade ago when women in WWE were simply treated as eye candy and barely given any time inside the ring at all. Sure, fans might poke fun at the constant push of WWE Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon as a “trailblazer” but the “women’s revolution” she promised is certainly legitimate.
The past calendar year has seen WWE’s first women’s Hell in a Cell match, the first women’s Money in the Bank ladder match, and most recently, the first women’s Royal Rumble. If a superstar like Ronda Rousey had arrived years ago, the chance of a women’s revolution may well have fallen squarely on her shoulders. Today, however, she’s like the cherry on top of the cake. And assuming Ronda succeeds, could we see a women’s match main event Wrestlemania 35 in 2019? Stranger things have happened.
#5 Vince craves the mainstream
It’s a strange conundrum that has baffled WWE fans for years – owner Vince McMahon is the most successful pro-wrestling promoter of all time by a large margin, and yet the one thing he seems to crave is for WWE to be recognized as something more than pro-wrestling. After all, he coined the term sports entertainment and the list of the number of times he’s grasped for mainstream acceptance is probably too long to count at this point.
Which is why Ronda Rousey is probably guaranteed to succeed in WWE. At the end of the day, success in WWE comes only if Vince McMahon allows it – we’ve seen him cut the legs from underneath some of his talent while pushing and pushing until certain others breakthrough as big stars with the fans. Rousey, however, is already a big star – with the exception of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, she’s probably the biggest mainstream star currently linked with the promotion – even bigger than Brock Lesnar.
If you think Dana White pushed Ronda down the throats of the fans, just wait until Vince McMahon has a chance at making her the biggest attraction in WWE – it’ll be something else entirely. McMahon has likely craved the day he could get his hands on a legitimate superstar – one who comes from outside the pro-wrestling bubble – for absolutely years, and now he’s got her, massive success will simply be seen as the only possible option.
