Despite UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey’s regular insistence that she wants to become a pro wrestler and compete for the WWE Divas Championship, a lot of people are saying it will never happen. Dana White says she’s done.
In the latest edition of the Ross Report, legendary WWE play-by-play man Jim Ross added his thoughts, saying he’d love to see Rousey compete in a WWE ring — particularly at WrestleMania 32 — but not as a “WWE Diva,” and not for the Divas Championship.
Here’s what he had to say:
“Ronda Rousey and her camp, influenced by The Rock, are strategic in their thinking. Rousey has a huge payday awaiting her for a WrestleMania story line down the road and they know it. No one ever makes too much money, plus RR knows that she can’t be unbreakable forever inside the Octagon. It was timely of Charlotte to stand her ground and respond to Ronda recently but I would rather see RR versus a heel specifically Stephanie McMahon as I feel that’s the money. Plus, do you really want Ronda Rousey going for the WWE Divas Title? Is Rousey a Diva? Is the term Diva still relevant? In any event, Ronda Rousey in a hot, personal issue interests me more than her going for the title at this time. The question is can Rousey and WWE come together for something BIG for the Texas WrestleMania?”
While there’s a good point in there — if you have Ronda Rousey, you should do something big and memorable with her — it’s somewhat lost in the antiquated association of “Diva” with “the kind of women’s wrestling WWE was doing when Jim Ross was around.” To answer Ross’ questions, if Rousey was a female competitor in WWE, then yes, she’d be a Diva. It’s branding. It doesn’t mean she’s the dictionary definition of a Diva. I don’t like the term, either, nor do I like calling every wrestler a “superstar” and every non-active wrestler a “legend,” but that’s the corporate mandate. So yeah, she’d be a Diva, and the term Diva is still relevant. They aren’t branding it the “Women’s Wrestling Revolution,” right? If you’re building up your female stars with the idea that they can succeed because Rousey’s proven she’s a legit fighting draw, why pull back on associating Rousey with them when you have her?
I wanted to write a big thing about how you’d be wasting Rousey against a non-wrestler like Stephanie, and how that new crop of women like Charlotte (or preferably Sasha Banks, because “preferably” always comes before “Sasha Banks”) could use the rub, but all of Rousey’s fights are the same, aren’t they? If you want somebody to lose to an armbar in 20 seconds, nobody’d sell that better than a flailing, mugging Stephanie McMahon. So, I’m with you on that. How funny will it be when it takes Ronda eight minutes to beat her?
