After a January pay-per-view campaign and two and a half months of promotional video packages, former MMA fighter Ronda Rousey made her World Wrestling Entertainment debut April 8 at WrestleMania 34 to a crowd of more than 78,000 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
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Rousey appeared on the WWE stage ready to fight, paying tribute to her role model and late WWE hall of fame inductee, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. She wore a kilt and a leather jacket, just like her idol. Her top, also modeled on Piper’s, was bright white with red seams and “Rowdy” in a flaming comic book font.
The match was a mixed tag team match, with WWE Raw’s general manager, Kurt Angle, being Rousey’s partner against WWE’s chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon and her husband of 15 years, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the group’s executive vice president of talent, live events and creative, who is in charge of developing wrestler story lines.
Angle being Rousey’s partner helps with the storyline of her transitioning from MMA and UFC to sports entertainment, something to which Angle can relate. In 1996, Angle won a gold medal at the Summer Olympics with a broken neck, but he eventually made the transition from contact sport to sports entertainment. He may have understood her struggle to switch gears more than other superstars on the roster — apart from current WWE Universe champion, Brock Lesnar.
Mixed tag team matches often call for competitors to only go against their respective sexes, with females only facing females and men facing men. Rousey showed that no gender was safe from her capabilities when she fired multiple punches to an unprepared Triple H; Rousey also put him, briefly, in an arm bar submission.
She and Angle won the match, with Rousey locking McMahon in an arm bar, who did not hesitate to submit when she realized her husband would not save her from the submission hold. In victory, Rousey leaped into Angle’s arms with excitement.
Dramatics heavily played a role in this match, as opposed to other matches during the night that were more physical. There was a lot more use of dramatic tags, more trash talk and more screen time in comparison to the other tag matches during the night. WrestleMania for Rousey was about showing the WWE Universe what she could do for the first time; though the fan base is already aware of her fighting capabilities, it is the story lines and the acting within the story lines that will allow her to win over WWE fans who do not know her from her MMA days, or at all.
Rousey is here to stay in the WWE, as she signed a multi-year contract at the beginning of the year and makes appearances on WWE RAW. With this one win in an impactful debut, the momentum of her arrival continues.
