5 reasons why Ronda Rousey will succeed in WWE
After this weekend’s WWE Royal Rumble event, all the talk was about one person – not Shinsuke Nakamura, who won the men’s Rumble, nor Asuka, who won the women’s equivalent. Instead, all the press went to former UFC Women’s Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, who was announced as signing a long-term deal with WWE to enter the squared circle.
Rousey isn’t the first crossover from MMA to the scripted world of WWE – Brock Lesnar is obviously the most famous, although he started life in WWE, other notable fighters such as Rampage Jackson, Don Frye and Tito Ortiz have dabbled in pro-wrestling too. But how will Rousey find life in WWE? Will she succeed or fail? The likelihood is she’ll succeed, and here are five reasons why.
#1 The Lesnar Effect
While Brock Lesnar was undoubtedly a big name in WWE when he first rose to fame there in the early 2000’s, he wasn’t exactly one of the biggest drawing superstars that Vince McMahon’s promotion had ever produced. But when he returned from his stint in the UFC in 2012, he instantly became one of the biggest stars that the world of pro-wrestling had ever seen, drawing massive buy rates and sparking fan attention like few others. Why was this?
Well, basically, being seen as a legitimate fighter gave Brock an added aura that he’d never had before. While he’d lost his final two UFC fights before leaving MMA, he was still widely recognized as one of the baddest men on the planet. Sound like Rousey at all? It’s practically the same story – a dominant former UFC champ (and if anything, Ronda was more dominant than Lesnar) coming to the WWE instantly holds a totally different aura to the lifelong pro-wrestlers currently in the promotion.
Even though WWE fans would probably frown upon it, it’d be perfectly natural to have Rousey simply destroy anyone matched with her in the squared circle based on her former UFC career. Everyone knows she’s as legitimate as it gets – even after those losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes – and so we can expect WWE fans to treat her as a ridiculously big deal, far beyond any female star that the promotion’s ever had before. Which means more subs to the WWE Network and more money rolling into Vince McMahon’s pockets.