MMA star Chael Sonnen recently sat down with Chris Jericho to talk about Ronda Rousey in WWE and her pending debut pro wrestling match. When Sonnen asks if Rousey can learn to wrestle enough to do meaningful spots by WrestleMania 34, Jericho responds with:
”Absolutely, and I’ll tell you the reason why: Wrestling is all show business. We control everything, who wins, who loses, the match, whatever it may be. If you look at some of the great matches involving celebrities of all time — Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Lawrence Taylor … Floyd Mayweather vs. Big Show — you’ll see those. I mean, Mr. T back in the day, it wasn’t classics but they don’t have to be.
”Here’s how you put together a great WrestleMania: you put together… it’s a variety show. Here’s your matches that have a chance to be 5-stars, here’s your matches just to get everybody on the card that have no chance of being great matches you’re just putting everybody on the show, and then here’s your attraction matches. Here’s your Brock vs. Roman, here’s your Angle & Ronda vs. Triple H & Stephanie. They can put together the match any way they want. All they have to do is just put it together so she has one or two spots that really pop and mean something. The rest is all dog and pony show, show business. A) She’s an athlete, B) She’s a wrestling fan, and C) she wants to do this. She’s going to be fine.”
This, then, is all the more reason it was a smart play on WWE’s part to book her in a tag team match with Kurt Angle and Triple H there to do the heavy lifting while Rousey can get in for a few big spots with Stephanie McMahon. They’ve shown they can put together interesting matches and, like Jericho goes on to say, it may not be a classic but it doesn’t need to be.
We’re just three weeks away from finding out how they handle it, and how Rousey does on such a big stage. Jericho thinks she’ll be fine.
