Vince McMahon was in charge of booking majority of UFC Hall of Famer Ronda Rousey’s career in WWE. He was running things when she first joined the company, and was also responsible for bringing her back in 2022. The Baddest Woman on the Planet was pretty successful in WWE, but she could not please the fans completely and was unhappy with her booking, just like many stars who worked under McMahon in the past.
In an interview with The Lapsed Fan, Ronda Rousey talked about a segment in which Vince McMahon wanted her to continuously lock Becky Lynch in armbars. The overuse of the move left Nia Jax disappointed, who had helped Rousey in building up the move over the previous year before that segment.
Rousey told Jax that it wasn’t her decision and she was just an avatar for McMahon, who she called an ’80-year-old pervert.’
“That was actually Triple H that came up with that, as being the mock armbar finisher. But, it’s also, like, you could see people laying back and they’re arching on the arm and they’re holding it straight and they’re holding it right from the – if you actually took it, it would break.
Yes (you can blame Triple H for the bent armbar). But how do you really – the one time I did do it when I leaned back on it straight was me and Becky (Lynch). I think it was my heel turn or whatever and I felt like it had much more impact then. But, freakin’ Vince (McMahon) liked it so much, he was like, ‘Armbar her again! Armbar her again! Armbar her again!’
I know when Nia Jax is all pissed at me afterward. She was like, ‘We spent all year selling the hell out of this armbar and you just did three of ‘em to Becky like it was nothing.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m like an avatar for a f**king 80-year-old f**king pervert on the phone, alright? I have no say in this. What are we supposed to do?’”
Rousey went on to say that there was no collaboration in WWE under Vince McMahon.
“It’s just an absolute sh*tshow (working under the Vince McMahon regime). There was no collaboration. It was basically, like, you would spend so much time and effort thinking about the story and how you could make it better and they wouldn’t talk to you at all and they would spend like five minutes thinking about it the night before, and then throw you a version of it that was a complete sh*tshow, and it wasn’t a collaboration. It was like a negotiation to try to get it to not suck as much as possible, and then you go out there and it’s like, the final iteration of you trying to be, ‘Can this be changed? Can this be changed?’ How can I make this not absolutely f**king suck?
And then, you go out there and you do something that you have not even been able to practice and you don’t even really believe in and that’s what’s coming across, and so they were only, like, spending a little bit of time on The Bloodline because (Paul) Heyman was the head of all of that and he was like the Vince-whisperer of being able to get sh*t through, and it shows.
It shows that, oh, we’re gonna spend some time and effort on this and f**k everybody else and we’re just gonna fly on the seat of our pants and that’s why they’re just doing the same rehash sh*t over and over and over again because that was just what Vince came up with the night before, you know? And it was just all bottlenecked through there and just really took the funnest thing that is such a great time when you’re out there with your friends and you’re doing something you really believe in.
There was some flashes in the pan. He had some flashes of brilliance and there’s some days that we’d be able to hammer through something good, somehow be able to pull it off with no time to rehearse it. Like me and Charlotte’s ‘I Quit’ match, we didn’t have the match agreed upon when it was until 30 minutes before and I had 30 minutes to memorize it without even being able to be out there to practice it.”
Also Read: Charlotte Flair Reacts To Becky Lynch Saying Ronda Rousey Can’t Wrestle
