Ronda Rousey’s journey to WWE took some time but now that he is officially part of the WWE Universe it looks like there is little stopping her from becoming a top name in WWE for a long time to come.
Although she is living a dream there was a time when Ronda was so focused on MMA that she didn’t have time for WWE. But that seemed to change when Shayna Baszler and Jessamyn Duke started convincing her that she could make the leap.
“It wasn’t until I was fighting in the UFC and Shayna [Baszler] and Jessamyn [Duke] moved in with me and they always put WWE on the TV, it seemed like every single night,” Rowdy Ronda said to Skysports.
It turns out that the little girl who used to have a Hulk Hogan wrestling buddy found herself coming back full circle to pro wrestling as she found an escape in sports entertainment after her life revolved around MMA.
“We would fight all day in the gym and when we came home we didn’t want to talk about fighting, we wanted to escape through wrestling. It was our sanctuary from the stress of the fighting world and it slowly became more and more where we wanted to be.”
Shayna Baszler is currently honing her craft in NXT but it could only be a matter of time before she emerges on the main roster to have dealings with Rowdy Ronda. It would be a fitting piece of the story for these two as Baszler was the first among them to make the transition into sports entertainment.
“Shayna was the first one of us to take that leap and she’s always been an example to me. She did women’s MMA before me and opened a lot of doors for all of us,” Rousey continued.
“If it wasn’t for her making a point of us sitting down and watching wrestling together then I wouldn’t be here either. When [Baszler] made that jump from fighting from wrestling I saw how much happier that made her and how more applied she was. It was hard not to want to be part of that.”
Life is a funny thing sometimes because Ronda Rousey might not have had any idea her way of decompressing after a long night of fighting would result in a career move like this. It’s just a good thing she was roommates with Duke and Baszler who brought WWE to Rousey’s attention as something she could actually do.
