Ronda Rousey Goes Into Detail About Her Survivor Series Botch
Ronda Rousey successfully defended her SmackDown Women's Championship at Survivor Series WarGames, but the match wasn't without controversy. A botched spot involving an attempted DDT on the apron resulted in plenty of criticism from fans, to the point where "#FireRondaRousey" trended for a few days last week. Rousey then appeared on a gaming streak this week and openly admitted the mistake was her fault and that she felt she "failed" Shotzi.
"I actually pitched that spot because I love that she does that," Rousey began. "We couldn't practice in my ring because the ropes are too loose. We couldn't practice it when we got to the arena 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 f—. Ahhh, just go to where you're supposed to go.' I f—ed 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."
"What really bummed me out was, my favorite thing in the match was turning around a hostile crowd," she continued. "We're in Boston, of course they're hostile because they're angry at the fact that they live there. Right when we got them turned around with the 'holy s—' and the crossbody into the fans, 'F— yeah, we're turning it around, we got all the awesome s— coming up.' Then, Shotzi rolls me in the ring, and they're like, 'Get out of there. Plan B, get out of there, we're out of time. We gotta go.' 'What?' She was going up and I had to run up and throw her down and throw her into the armbar and get out of there because that's what they were telling me on the mics because I guess the match before us (AJ Styles vs. Finn Balor) went over by six minutes and they were concerned about going over on time. The match after us was a three-way (Seth Rollins vs. Bobby Lashley vs. Austin Theory), so they wouldn't be able to communicate with each other to make the match shorter and the match after that was WarGames and they couldn't cut that out. It was the only place they could get that time back. I was bummed though because we worked on that match for two weeks and we were really excited about it.
Rousey concluded with, "I felt like I really failed Shotzi. I really wanted to showcase her s— and make all of her s— look great and show everyone how great she is. That's one of the main reasons I wanted to come back for this run, to showcase the new talent. Show everyone how great Liv (Morgan) is, Shotzi is, Raquel (Rodriguez), and Shayna (Baszler) and showcase all these women that haven't been getting the attention that I think they deserve. That wasn't the match, that was like the beginning of the match and I'm bummed we're getting judged from what not really we put together."