• Former Champion Won’t Return To WWE Because All Her Friends Got Released
Ronda Rousey joined WWE in 2018, and had a decent first run there. She didn’t find her second run very amusing, and a big section of the fanbase didn’t enjoy it either.
The Baddest Woman On The Planet has made it clear that she’s done with wrestling and doesn’t intend on going back to WWE.
In an interview with Raj Prashad of Yahoo’s Uncrowned, the former Women’s Champion said that there’s no reason she’d go back to WWE as her friends got released from the company.
“It was a lot of needless anxiety and things like that. And the whole company was just a chaotic sh*t show on the inside. And then they ended up dropping all my friends. So I really have no reason to go back.
I wanted to do a run with the Four Horsewomen and I never got to do that. And now I feel like I’ve already accomplished everything that I wanted to in WWE and all that’s really left for me is to go there and have fun with my friends, and none of my friends are there anymore.”
Rousey left WWE in the summer of 2023, while Shayna Baszler was let go by the company earlier this year. Marina Shafir is under contract with AEW and Jessamyn Duke has been away from pro wrestling since being released by WWE in 2021.
• WCW Legend Says Toni Storm’s “Timeless” Gimmick Is The Best In Women’s Wrestling History
Toni Storm didn’t get a lot of opportunities to showcase her talent in WWE, but moving to AEW helped her become one of the top female stars in the pro wrestling industry. Her unique “Timeless” gimmick has gotten over with the majority of fans.
On the latest edition of the What Happened When podcast, Conrad Thompson asked AEW commentator Tony Schiavone if The Undertaker had the greatest gimmick in pro wrestling history and if Toni Storm could work her way into the same category.
Schiavone agreed about the fact that The Undertaker is the greatest character in pro wrestling history and then praised Toni Storm.
Below is what the WCW Legend said:
“I was thinking about that too, but I didn’t really want to compare Toni Storm to Undertaker, but that is a tremendous gimmick. Probably, as far as women’s wrestling goes, the best [gimmick of all time].
Again, just taking an idea that Tony Khan had and putting the right people in the right places. You couldn’t really do this with anybody; she just really leaned into it, as the old cliche goes, and is just wonderful to work with.”
• Vince McMahon Was Not Sold On AJ Styles Being A Top Star Due To 2 Reasons
AJ Styles achieved success in pro wrestling all over the world before joining WWE in 2016. Many fans were skeptical about how he would be booked by Vince McMahon due to his physique at the time, as the former Chairman of the company was usually known to push tall and muscular stars.
On the Busted Open podcast, Nic Nemeth (fka Dolph Ziggler) spoke about Styles needing to convince McMahon of his ability due to the way he looked and spoke, despite being a successful star before arriving in WWE.
“When he was coming into WWE, behind the scenes, I was told, this is secondhand, but the boss was like, the way he saw AJ was he still had that 80s mentality: if you’re 6’5, OK, I can go with you. You look like the Warlord, whatever the situation is. And AJ is jacked, but he’s not 6’5.
And at the time, I had heard that because of him having somewhat of a southern twang to his voice. Basically Vince here is like Heath Slater telling a joke, and is like, ‘Oh, that’s what AJ Styles is. OK, I can’t even take him seriously,’ because that’s still that mentality from his brain from, like, the 60s and 80s. Like, ‘Oh, he’s not from New York; he doesn’t have his accent that we have.’
I heard that, I’m like, ‘Oh, come on. What, he can’t really still think that way?’ And I kind of secondhand and first heard of, like, he was fighting an uphill battle, even already coming here with all his accolades, with everything he’s done, with everything everybody knows he’s capable of. Even then he was fighting an uphill battle with the boss. And whatever he did in his body of work while he was here, which, by the way, is f’n fantastic, he won over the boss.”
AJ Styles ended up convincing Vince McMahon of his ability as he became a top star the same year he joined the company. He had a massive feud with John Cena and won the WWE Championship later that year.
