Ronda Rousey finished up with WWE last year after she was defeated by Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam in 2023, and now she’s opening up about her time with the company. Over the last few days the wrestling world has been talking a lot about The Baddest Woman on the Planet’s honest thoughts that she has shared in her new memoir Our Fight.
At one point in the book Ronda Rousey reflects on some of the changes WWE made to NXT in recent years while also taking aim at John Laurinaitis. An excerpt from the book reads as follows:
“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***ability.
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.”
Ronda Rousey also explained during a recent interview why she has no plans to return to WWE, and you can get more on that here.
