Ronda Rousey: Becky Lynch match didn’t happen due to ’80-year-old a–hole’ Vince McMahon

Ronda Rousey spoke about her second WWE run and her issues with Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard, and John Laurinitias in a new interview with Chris Van Vliet.

Rousey, who is promoting her upcoming graphic novel “Expecting the Unexpected,” says that while she didn’t enjoy her second stint in WWE, she still loves pro wrestling. She also said she’s heard the company has made improvements since the Paul “Triple H” Levesque era began.

“I love pro wrestling. My experience in my last run wasn’t the best, it was the death throes of the Vince McMahon era and they just made it so needlessly stressful. I just wish I could just show up to the venue and already know what the match is and have it memorized,” Rousey said.

“I’ve heard it’s a lot better. But yeah, that wasn’t my experience before. My experience before was like if you showed up to Saturday Night Live and no one had written the show yet, like you hadn’t been filming it and practicing it all week. It was like, you just showed up and you had to negotiate what the script was going to be until the very last second. Even if we killed it and had such a great time while we were out there, it was just the needless anxiety of getting to the finish line just made it so not fun. So unfortunately, it’s kind of put a gross kind of a film on the incredible experience.”

“I hear from everybody that’s so much better now, and I’m happy for them. But it’s also, I got babies, I can’t be taking them on the road. I did it for a little bit with one, I can’t do that with two. It was hard on my husband for us not all to be there all the time. I just don’t think I can ask them to sacrifice that anymore.”

Rousey also spoke about her match with Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam 2023 and what led to it being booked.

“I think if we did the match at Bloodsport or something, people would have loved it. But I think the crowd, it wasn’t for them at all. It was all MMA easter eggs and all of these moments in MMA history that we’re big geeks for that, we were recreating and throwing homage to in the match and it was not inviting any audience participation or anything like that. But it was kind of like, I don’t know if you read my book, but it was a nice little f*ck you on the way out. You’re gonna sit here and watch this match that we wanted to do from the very beginning. I don’t care what you think, go get some f*cking popcorn. But yeah, we loved it. We had a great time. And from the very, very beginning, I always wanted to be able to wrestle with Shayna and be able to put her over and leave. Which they never would have let us do unless I threatened to leave right at the new year when they told me that I wouldn’t be able to fight Becky at WrestleMania, which was what I came back to do. And I was like, Fine, I’m gonna tag with Shayna, and she’s in turn on me, and then I’m gonna leave, or I’m gonna f*cking leave right now. That was the only reason we were able to do it, because they wouldn’t let us do any Four Horsewoman stuff. They wouldn’t let me and Shayna do anything together, because Vince was convinced that no one knew that me and Shayna were actually friends.”

When asked why a match vs. Becky Lynch at WrestleMania didn’t happen, Rousey responded: “Because Vince is an 80-year-old asshole.”

Asked if there was no love lost there, Rousey said, “No, Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis, Bruce Prichard they can all suck a dick.”

However, when asked about Levesque and Stephanie McMahon, Rousey said: “They are fantastic, love them.”

“I was talking to (Stephanie) about (kids). I was just excited about having a baby and we just started trying. Actually, no, we already had two miscarriages, and I was just going to start doing IVF. She took the necklace off of her neck, this necklace and it was a locket with pictures of her girls in it. She was like, this has my babies in it. I want you to put your babies in it. So I never took her babies out. I put my baby on top and I’m gonna have to add some more pictures.”

When asked if Rousey is done with wrestling, she responded:

“Full time yeah. I might come back and have some fun here and there. But I can’t be leaving home and being on the road like that.”

Rousey also addressed the finish to the main event of WrestleMania 35:

“I didn’t think my shoulders were flat on the ground, so I was trying to scoot to get my shoulders flat because it’s so f*cking loud I can’t hear anything. But that’s the difference between a match that got thrown together the night before and the debut match, which is a match that had been put together over weeks with tons of support and practice and opinions and everything like that. Why did we put a whole year into promoting and building this match, and then it’s just thrown together at the last second? We were still figuring it out when we were at the venue, and that’s what a lack of practice and rehearsal does.”

Rousey says she wanted to use the finish to the match at WrestleMania 35 to lead into a singles match with Lynch but it never happened.

“I wanted to use that. I wanted to use that as, okay, this is how we lead into the next one. We bring it up on the Tron and say, you never got me, this is bullsh*t. The referees are all in your pocket. And put that into the next, you know, the singles between me and Becky that everybody wanted that got taken away.” 

The full episode of Ronda Rousey on Insight with Chris Van Vliet is available below: