Rousey entered her UFC 193 fight on November 15, 2015 against Holly Holm as a -2000 favorite. She ended up getting knocked out in the second round. A year later, she blacked out the media and faced Amanda Nunes on December 30, 2016 at UFC 207, only to get defeated via TKO in 48 seconds.
Former wCw President Eric Bischoff discussed Ronda Rousey signing with WWE in an interview with WrestlingInc earlier this week. Bischoff noted that Rousey "got her ass handed to her badly" in her last two fights, which caused her mystique to be damaged. However, he felt that what hurt her worse was how she handled those losses to the press and to the public.
"She was bitter and she didn't handle those losses with the kind of grace that could have endeared her to the audience," Bischoff said. "She could have been a bigger star and a bigger babyface as a result of those losses than she possibly would have been had she won them. Rather than seizing that opportunity and seeing that opportunity for what it was in that moment and being a gracious loser and acknowledging that she got beat - because she got beat by a better athlete on that particular night - she would have gotten more over because of that in some ways than when she was beating people up."
"When she crapped all over the media and crapped all over the fans by refusing to do interviews and being bitter, it turned the audience against her, but not in a way that you can build upon. There's a way of getting heat that works for you, and there's a way of getting heat that works against you. The heat that she created for herself was not the latter."
"What is the WWE going to do, bring her in and have her wipe out half of the entire women's division because she's the baddest woman on the planet? That won't work. Are they going to put her over as a babyface? Eh, good luck with that. So there's some real creative character challenges there."
"I think given the time and the patience and acknowledging where Ronda has been the last 16 - 18 months of her life and figuring out how to create that character and that storyline in full acknowledgement of that history, I think that there's a way to do it. But they're going to have to be careful."
"How is she going to handle becoming a performer in a scripted environment? How is she going to learn and adapt to the challenges of telling a story using physical drama instead of going in and competing physically, because they're two different worlds. Professional wrestling... is no different than a Broadway play except that in a Broadway play, actors are using dialogue to tell a story and establish their characters, while in WWE, they're using a physical dialogue to tell their story and build their characters. That's a very unique art, it really is."
"How quickly will Ronda adapt to that art? That remains to be seen," Bischoff continued. "I wish her the best. She's a beautiful young woman, she's obviously talented, she's an athlete. I really wish her the best, but if you go back and look at the last 16 - 18 months of her history and the baggage that she's bringing with her - along with the notoriety that she got, she's got great notoriety - but there's some baggage there too. How that is all thrown into the big stew pot and how it's all cooked and what other ingredients they add to it so that we can see how she comes out of that, I'm very excited to see how that evolves."
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