Written by
Alex Hunt• Published 28th March 2024
Becky Lynch has evaluated the wrestling skills of one of her most famous WWE rivals.
WrestleMania 34 saw the in-ring debut of former UFC Champion Ronda Rousey. Teaming with Kurt Angle to defeat Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, Rousey gained high praise in her debut performance and in many of the matches that followed. Becoming Women’s Champion at SummerSlam, Rousey was set for a showdown at Survivor Series against Lynch, who was in the midst of her meteoric rise to the top of the card as The Man.
Due to a concussion sustained by Nia Jax, Lynch missed out on the match but would still continue to trade insults with Rousey on social media to keep the rivalry alive. Triumphantly winning the 2019 Women’s Royal Rumble, Lynch wasted no time in choosing Rousey as her opponent for WrestleMania 35, which also saw Charlotte Flair added to make the match winner takes all. Victorious at WrestleMania 35, Lynch became Becky 2 Belts in what was Rousey’s final match in nearly 2 years.
Returning at the 2022 Royal Rumble, Rousey would run through the field and win the match for the first time in her career. Although Rousey would find championship success once more, fans did not connect with the UFC star the same way they did in her first run and found many of her matches to be subpar compared to her standout performances in 2018.
Clearly frustrated with her time in the company, Ronda Rousey has called out WWE and some of the top employees in her upcoming autobiography Our Fight. On top of letting her true feelings be known about Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis and Bruce Prichard among others, Ronda Rousey also details multiple occasions where creative direction left her irate.
“She Couldn’t Wrestle”: Becky Lynch On Ronda Rousey
While appearing on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, Lynch was asked about Rousey’s comments that have been made both in her book and in media interviews to promote the autobiography. Giving a lengthy response, Lynch began by stating that the response was one she expected and added that she is aware that at times WWE conditions are less than ideal:
“No, I’m not surprised [by Ronda’s negativity]… Look, I have a very different view and a very different experience of WWE, but I always wanted to do this. This is what I always wanted to do. I love this. Is it perfect? No. Nothing is. I’ve worked in little delis that you’re like, ‘How does this place operate?’ The size of WWE and the amount of talent and people that go into making it go live on TV for five hours a week when you’re just talking about Raw and SmackDown. Then you’ve got pay-per-views. Then you’ve got NXT.
There’s so many people that go behind that, so you’re going to be dealing with a lot of people. So you’re going to have some negative experiences, but this is my dream. I’ve always wanted it to be good. I’ve always looked at myself, how can I be better? How can I make the division better? I’ve always worked to make it better,”
While Rousey may be under the assumption that there may have been a personal element to her bad booking, Lynch gave her own perspective and stated that she has not been targeted to look intentionally bad:
“Stuff like the creative, no, it’s not always great. There’s been a history of it not making sense to me but nobody’s purposely going, ‘How do we make Becky Lynch look awful?’ They have so much going on. There’s so much going on. The fact that we pull everything off the way that we do and even at a time when, notoriously, the shows were getting Rewritten as we were going live on TV and we still got them done. We still went out there, we still hit our times, and we still made the show work. No, it was not always great, but a lot of it was, ‘We’re all doing the best we can.’
Nobody wants to go out there and do bad work, or make anybody look bad. I don’t think anybody is like, ‘How do I make this person look bad?’ Unless they’re supposed to be a heel and in terms of, you’re only trying to make them look bad, but they’re all like, if we do good, the company does good. So I don’t think anybody is trying to make anybody fail. I suppose that’s my point. Nobody’s trying to make anybody fail and I think when you love this, you look to try and make it better.”
Lynch continued, referencing Rousey’s debut match and commenting that the match was designed to put her in the best light possible, adding that Rousey could not wrestle:
“She was coming from a different industry. She was a star and she should have been handled differently in terms of, I think she had a great first outing that everybody thought, ‘Oh, she can wrestle.’ I mean this with respect, but she couldn’t wrestle. What do we do isn’t something that you can just have one good match and then, ‘Okay, yeah. I’m off to the races.’ It’s a craft and you have to learn your craft.
You have to be diligent about learning your craft, but everybody treated Ronda like she already knew it because when she first came in, she was good in that first bout, but she was also working with Kurt Angle, she was working with Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, it was a well-rehearsed match because everybody wanted her to succeed.
Also in the interview, Becky Lynch gave a massive update about her WWE contract.
During a separate interview, Becky Lynch criticised the use of part-time stars.
H/t to Fightful.
