Ronda Rousey explains how her bachelorette party led to her joining WWE.
Ronda Rousey joining WWE helped the women reach new heights, including main-eventing WrestleMania. She was the last of MMA’s Four Horsewomen to join WWE, but it was her bond with the other three women, Shayna Baszler, Jessamyn Duke, and Marina Shafir, that led to her joining WWE in the first place.
Ronda Rousey explained during the most recent Wives of Wrestling podcast that because she wanted to have her bachelorette party, and both Marina Shafir and Shayna Baszler had already relocated to Florida because of WWE commitments, she wound up having her bachelorette party in Florida where she and the other horsewomen all engaged in pro wrestling training.
"Shayna (Baszler) got me to WWE in general and then she started training at the PC. Marina (Shafir) moved there with [Roderick Strong]. I guess I kind of approached them," she began. "I had a bachelorette party and I wanted to hang out with the girls, but everyone was in Florida doing wrestling, so I was like, 'why don't I come and do wrestling with you guys and we can hang out.' I didn't have Triple H's number or anything, but (I talked with my agent) and was like, 'What do you think WWE would think if I asked my bachelorette party to spend like a week training over there. It was me, Jessamyn (Duke), and Shayna doing an RV road trip from LA to Florida.' That was my present to myself. I basically wanted to give myself a tryout. We had so much fun and it was a really good time."
Continuing on, Ronda Rousey reiterated that she initially only wanted to be a part of WWE for one year before trying to have a baby with her husband, Travis Browne, and initially, she wanted to be done by November but WWE asked her to extend her initial stay through to WrestleMania as WWE plans their booking for an entire year around the “Showcase of the Immortals.”
"My agent Brad set up a meeting with me and Triple H and it was, 'would you like to do this?' kind of thing. I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't think I would be able to have any actual matches on my own. I didn't know what live shows were, I didn't know that was a thing. It ended up becoming a 'give a mouse a cookie' situation where I was like, 'Okay, I'll do this fun wrestling thing before me and Travis have a baby,' it was like a bucket list, 'let me do WWE stuff for a year before we have a baby.' At first, I was like, 'Oh yeah, by November, we want to have a baby,' and they were like, 'We kind of do things from WrestleMania to WrestleMania, so could you extend it to the next WrestleMania?' 'Alright, fine, whatever.' Then it just developed into this entire world and universe and experience that I didn't know was coming. It was very organic the way everything happened," she said.
Ronda Rousey did take a three-year break following WrestleMania 35 in 2019 and gave birth to her daughter in 2021. However, it only took her four months after giving birth before she returned at the 2022 Royal Rumble event to win the titular match and challenge Charlotte Flair for the WWE SmackDown Women's Championship in a losing effort at WrestleMania 38.
She will get another chance to become WWE SmackDown Women's Champion at WrestleMania Backlash as she faces Charlotte Flair in an I Quit match. You can check out the full card here.
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