At WrestleMania 38, Charlotte Flair defeated Ronda Rousey to retain the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship. However, Flair’s reign came to an end at the following premium live event WrestleMania Backlash when Ronda Rousey defeated Charlotte to win the title in an I Quit match.
In her new book Our Fight, Ronda Rousey revealed that she was less than thrilled with the lack of time she had to prepare for the match which resulted in her confronting Vince McMahon before she went out to the ring.
“Vince was sitting alone next to a monitor in an office chair hunched over his phone. At the surprise intrusion, he gave an expression that likely would have been a raised eyebrow had his face not been heavily Botoxed. He had the appearance of a seedy Vegas mob boss powered by anabolic steroids and Viagra.
“I can’t f*****g do this last-minute s**t,” I said. “I need to be able to prepare, rehearse. The match is in an hour and we still don’t have it figured out yet.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll do fine,” he assured me.
“I appreciate your confidence in me, but I didn’t come in here for a pep talk,” I said. “I came in to tell you that performing with zero prep is not only needlessly dangerous, but we’re not being enabled to do our best work.”
“Don’t worry, you ladies are gonna knock it out of the park tonight,” he replied.
“Vince, I want to prove you right and be the best investment you ever made,” I told him. “But I got in this game too late to ever improvise a five-star match like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels could. [WWE Hall of Famers known for being able to throw together incredible matches on the fly.] I proved in my debut that if you give me the time and resources to prepare, I can create something really special. But I can’t give you my best when forced to constantly throw s**t together at the last minute like this.”
“We’ll see what we can do, but you’ll be fine,” he said. “Give ’em h**l tonight.” I could tell he was just trying to get me out of the room.”
Despite the lack of prep time the match went over well, but Ronda Rousey continued to explain that once it was all said and done the only thing she could think about was how much better it could have been.
“As watered-down and thrown-together as the match was from what we had initially envisioned, it went down as one of the best “I Quit” matches in history. I walked back into Gorilla, the title belt over my shoulder. Vince sat behind a monitor. “You see?” he said, a look of satisfaction on his face. “You ladies were amazing! Sometimes, it just doesn’t come across as visceral if you practice it too much.” I couldn’t even bring myself to fake a smile. All I was thinking about was how much better it could have been.”
