Ronda Rousey On How She Expected Fans To React To Her When She Joined WWE

Ronda Rousey is now a member of the WWE roster, and she’ll be wrestling her debut match when she teams up with Kurt Angle to take on Triple H and Stephanie McMahon at WrestleMania 34 on Sunday, April 8.

So far Ronda has only made a few appearances on WWE programming, but she’s received a mostly positive response from the live audiences in attendance. Rousey recently spoke to The Mirror about the reaction she’s received, and she admitted that she expected people to resent her.

“I wasn’t expecting that to be honest. In judo I’ve been booed in 30 different countries over 10 years. I never heard anyone cheer for me once, ever. I didn’t know what it sounded like until MMA and even then, I would get booed and cheered, I would never get an overwhelmingly positive response. And I loved that, it was always the crowd competing with each other. I really thought like coming over into WWE, that a lot of people would resent me for it and feel like I didn’t deserve the opportunity and try and do everything they could to sabotage it. I walked out honestly expecting the worst in people. And I received the complete opposite.”

Ronda went on to say that she understands the fans could end up turning on her at any second, but she also said that she would be totally ok with that if it happens.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t even feel bad about it at all! Now I feel like I would be making [Roddy] Piper proud if I got booed so loud I couldn’t even hear myself talk and I would smile and think of him. And I hope everybody else would be too. I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome and when I received it, I feel like even though my years of being an athlete have kind of jaded me, I feel like I thought wrestling would harden me more, but I think it’s making me soft. Ha ha.”