Ronda Rousey had two runs in WWE and, for the most part, they were pretty successful. The Baddest Woman on the Planet should have been booked as an unstoppable monster in the same manner as Brock Lesnar, but Vince McMahon never really seemed to know what to do with Rousey.
By the time she left WWE last summer, neither she nor her fans were particularly sad to see the former UFC star part ways with the company. It's a shame because heading into her WrestleMania match with Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair, we saw a heel version of Rousey which offered a glimpse at what might have been.
Doing the rounds to promote her new book, Our Fight, the former WWE Women's Champion talked to Never Before Told about why she'll never return to WWE.
"Behind the scenes? How much of an absolute shit show it is at the WWE because they can't hold the story over my head and hold me hostage with my own career," Rousey said. "I don't need anything from them and I don't intend on going back, so I can say everything that I think and feel while everybody else is still held captive by their organization."
An excerpt from Our Fight is also doing the rounds online which sees Rousey lay into John Laurinaitis, the former head of talent relations in WWE who has found himself caught up in the heinous sexual abuse allegations made against disgraced former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon.
"As NXT grew and it became apparent that there was the potential to expand and profit from it, suddenly it became attractive to Vince. In fall of 2019, WWE launched a weekly NXT show—slated to go head-to-head on-air with AEW. Now, NXT was on the up-and-up, but so too was AEW. Then Triple H almost died, suffering from heart failure and requiring surgery. He stepped away to deal with his health, and in his absence, Vince’s cronies saw an opportunity."
"NXT was losing the ratings battle to AEW, they whispered to Vince. Changes needed to be made. Which is how John Laurinaitis, a former wrestler turned WWE executive and all-around dirtbag, ended up running NXT. Laurinaitis had made a name for himself as an average but by no means outstanding wrestler before he moved into playing an in-ring authority figure type and then a producer."
"He looked and acted like an entitled sixty-year-old former frat boy. Tall, blondish, and with a cleft chin, he always appeared to be scowling, even when he smiled. His raspy voice earned him the nickname Johnny Laryngitis, which was one of the nicer things people called him. Whereas Triple H looked for talent and potential in NXT prospects, it appeared John Laurinaitis looked for f*ckability."
"He further purged the NXT roster, firing it seemed like everyone over twenty-five and turning recruiting attention away from the indie circuits in favor of blonde sorority-types from places like the Universities of Florida and Tennessee. Putting the blame for the decline on Laurinaitis—which Vince would basically try to do a few months later—would be easy but Laurinaitis was only a symptom of what was wrong within WWE."
There's clearly a lot of bitterness on Rousey's side and it should be interesting to read her book for more insights into why she holds such disdain for WWE.
Yes, she was booked poorly and clearly disagreed on creative, but it's still surprising she didn't have a better time of it when Triple H started calling the shots (someone she speaks positively about in Our Fight based on what we've seen from it thus far).
Rousey's book goes on sale starting April 4.