Here it is, folks. The worst-kept secret in sports-entertainment is finally out of the bag: Ronda Rousey will make her pro-wrestling debut at this year’s WrestleMania.
The WWE‘s not-exactly-swift coup of the now-former MMA icon was completed today during the company’s Elimination Chamber event in Las Vegas.
Rousey appeared on-screen for the first time since her sort-of surprise arrival at last month’s Royal Rumble, signing a “contract” to appear exclusively on the WWE’s Monday Night RAW roster, which included the caveat of competing in a match at WrestleMania 34 in New Orleans this April.
Prior to January, Rousey’s last official appearance on WWE TV came at WrestleMania 31 in 2015, where she appeared alongside The Rock and confronted both Stephanie McMahon and Triple H.
That storyline came full circle in Las Vegas today, with Rousey exhibiting her (extremely limited) mic skills to trade barbs with Triple H and McMahon, before grabbing the significantly larger Triple H and, not to put too fine a point on it, lighting him the fuck up.
https://twitter.com/totaldivaseps/status/967960453686202369
That’ll do it.
WrestleMania 34 is scheduled to go down on Monday, April 9th (AUS time). The WWE hasn’t confirmed what kind of match Rousey will be competing in at the event, though it is strongly rumoured that she will be facing Stephanie McMahon & Triple H in a tag team match, with a high-profile partner standing in Rousey’s corner.
As for whether Triple H will recover from being spiked through a very solid table in time to compete is anyone’s guess at this stage. ‘Course that said we’ve seen someone recover from being murdered in a garbage truck inside a couple of weeks before, so I’d say it’s at least possible.
In other, definitely unrelated MMA/WWE news today…
— danawhite (@danawhite) February 26, 2018
I’m not saying Rousey needs a mouthpiece to help her with the promos, but there’s a certain extreme WWE advocate that could be clientless in a hot second, if things are to be believed.
