How Ronda Rousey Kept Her Royal Rumble Debut A Secret

The 2018 Royal Rumble concluded in a moment which had everyone talking the next day. Ronda Rousey came out and made her WWE debut and soon afterward it was announced she had signed a full-time deal with the company.

But she was in Colombia shooting a Mark Wahlberg movie called Mile 22 just before the big show. Ronda posted videos from Colombia on her Instagram and was tagged as being out of the country. But as it turns out, Rousey and WWE came up with a clever way to get her into the USA and even sent a red herring to California just in case.

“She was in Colombia, she flew on a chartered jet back and she tried to be hidden because it was a chartered jet and the only place anybody would have seen her,” Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio. “[The only place to] apparently tip people off would have been customs and she didn’t fly with any people she usually flies with and she sent Travis Brown back to California because they figured if anybody saw Travis Brown they would figure it out. So they really wanted to hide it but the reality is once everybody knew the Women’s Royal Rumble was going on last everyone pretty much figured it out.”

Sending Rousey’s MMA fighter husband Travis Brown to California to throw off speculation was a very wise move. In fact, it could have played to the strengths of the surprise debut. But as Meltzer noted, once everyone found out that the Women’s Royal Rumble was going to headline the big show it was pretty clear something epic was going to cap off the night.

Ronda Rousey is in WWE and word is she already has a pretty incredible WrestleMania match lined up. It looks like she’ll be around for a few years as well which is very exciting news. Only time will tell how they use such a hot commodity like Ronda Rousey, but knowing WWE they’re going to make the most of her.