HOTSEAT

RONDA ROUSEY

WHEN IT WAS announced that Ronda Rousey had officially signed with WWE in January, it didn’t come as much of a surprise. The former UFC champion and Olympic bronze medalist had appeared in a WWE ring at WrestleMania 31. She had appeared in the audience during the 2017 Mae Young Classic with her “Four Horsewomen” pals Shayna Baszler, Jessamyn Duke, and Marina Shafir. A longtime fan, Rousey made no secret that she hoped to become a professional wrestler once she was finished with MMA.

It was almost a given that Rousey—one of the biggest pay-per-view drawing powers of the past decade—would end up in WWE. The surprise is that she turned out to be a pro wrestling prodigy. Rousey wrestled her first match at WrestleMania 34, teaming with Kurt Angle to face Triple-H and Stephanie McMahon. The match was the show-stealer, and despite being in the ring with a potentially unwieldy combination of two Hall-of-Famers and a non-wrestler, Rousey delivered the goods, eventually earning the submission victory for her team. Barely four months after her debut, Rousey steamrolled Alexa Bliss to win the Raw Women’s title at SummerSlam. She has proven to be not only the most dominant female in WWE, but she has established herself as one of WWE’s biggest stars. Even though she had wrestled only 21 matches during the evaluation period (including house shows), Rousey was selected as the top woman in the 2018 PWI “Women’s 100.”

In this exclusive interview with Senior Writer Dan Murphy, Rousey talks about being number one, her reception in the WWE locker room, and what she would like to