Ronda Rousey successfully defended her SmackDown Women’s Championship at the Survivor Series WarGames premium live event at the end of November. Her opponent was Shotzi and although this was the first big singles title match for her WWE career, the match received some high criticism from fans.
In particular, during the match, there was a spot on the ring apron where Shotzi delivers a DDT. The move was not executed properly and Rousey in particular received most of the backlash from it.
Rousey recently explained on a live stream about what went wrong in the match and actually stated it was her that pitched the idea.
“Let me explain what happened,” she started to explain. “I actually pitched that spot because I love that she does that. We couldn’t practice in my ring because the ropes are too loose. We couldn’t practice it when we got to the area because there are these big cages. I’ve taken DDTs before, but I’ve never helped anybody over to the floor, so they were like, ‘Okay you have to have your hand here on her leg, the other hand on her hip, and you’re going to guide her over.’ Everyone was so focused on ‘guide her over, guide her to the floor,’ that it was literally all that was on my mind when it happened. When she went over it was like, ‘guide her.’ When she was down, I was like, ‘Oh fuck. Ahhh, just go to where you’re supposed to go.’ I fucked it up because I was so concerned with keeping somebody safe and a lot of time, when you see me do something for the first time, it’s the first time I ever did it. I was really concerned with keeping Shotzi safe and I made it look bad. You know what, sorry. Apparently, I deserve to be fired or burned. It reminds me of Monty Python, ‘BURN HER!’ There weren’t calls to fire anybody when Madcap Moss and Big E were spiked on their heads. ‘BURN HER ANYWAY!” I’m so sorry that I was so concerned with keeping someone safe that I made the bump look bad.” (Fightful)
After explaining how the match before hers went over by six minutes she says that they were concerned on the SmackDown Women’s Title match going over as well. With the Triple Threat and still a WarGames match in the show, they wanted to make sure there was enough time.
She continues, “I was bummed though because we worked on that match for two weeks and we were really excited about it. I feel like I really failed Shotzi. I really wanted to showcase her shit and make all of her shit look great and show everyone how great she is. That’s one main reason I wanted to come back for this run, to showcase the new talent. Sho everyone how great Liv is, Shotzi is, Raquel, and Shayna and showcase all of these women that haven’t been getting the attention that I think they deserve.”
Adding to the time issue, “I’ve never heard everybody so stressed about time as I was leading up to that pay-per-view. We literally only had eight minutes to do everything. When we hit eight minutes, ‘alright, you gotta go,’ I’m not gonna argue. They pay me to show up and do what they say to do. I’m bummed though. I feel like I failed Shotzi. Sorry. I’ll do better. I’ll make it up to her. I’ll let her beat my ass.”
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