Ronda Rousey returned to the WWE this past Saturday, winning the Royal Rumble and earning her spot in the main event of WrestleMania 38. Rousey was a top draw for the company during her initial 2018-19 run and her return to Raw helped give the Red Brand the best ratings it has seen in months. Booker T discussed Rousey’s return on the latest Hall of Fame Podcast and compared the former Raw Women’s Champion to Goldberg, someone he watched develop into a top star back in WCW.
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“I was one of the guys who said Ronda actually went out and studied the game, and did a hell of a job when she actually had a chance to go out and do her thing. I was always on top of that,” Booker said. “The exit, I wasn’t that happy with. As far as some of the stuff she said on social media about professional wrestling, I didn’t appreciate or anything like that. But as far as what Ronda did inside of that squared circle, she was always 100% or more. The fans really love ‘Rowdy’ Ronda Rousey.”
“Like when Goldberg first came in back in the day, Goldberg wasn’t a guy I think that really loved the business or anything like that, but he was making a lot of money. Goldberg was another guy that said certain things about the business,” he continued. “But now you see Goldberg, he realized and appreciate what this business has given to him. Now you see his son perhaps gravitating to it, and he feels a certain way after being around it, and then being away from it, and then being back to it. …When you’ve got a player like Ronda Rousey, you’ve got to use her, okay. It’s not like the regular kid on the block. It’s like if John Cena said, ‘hey guys, you got any room for me to come back for a couple of weeks?’ What do you say? ‘Bro, we ain’t got no space around here,’ you don’t say that, you make room. So for me, having Ronda back was really, really cool.”
Rousey closed this week’s Raw and, after nailing Becky Lynch with a judo throw, said she wouldn’t reveal which champion she’d be challenging at WrestleMania until this week’s episode of SmackDown. Rousey’s last match before the Rumble came at WrestleMania 35, where she lost to Lynch in a triple threat bout with Flair.
