Ronda Rousey made a number of controversial comments in early 2020 that led to fans and wrestlers alike speaking out against her. After telling Steve-O in an interview that she had no interest in returning to the WWE full-time because of “ungrateful fans,” Rousey doubled down by posting in a statement in a tweet about the age-old argument of wrestling being fake. She wrote at the time, “Anyone who is outraged by me calling pro wrestling ‘fake fights for fun’ has never been in a REAL fight. While you all are tip toeing around bruising some pro wrestlers’ huge soft egos – no one is thinking about all the REAL fighters you’re insulting when pretending pro wrestling is somehow on the same level of realism.”
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Natalya Neidhart, who played a big role in training Rousey for her initial run in WWE, was asked about those comments in a new interview with Sportskeeda this week. Needless to say, she wasn’t a fan of them.
“Umm, it was taken (laughs), it was taken, gosh, let me figure out how to answer this,” Natalya said. “First of all, I grabbed Ronda and put her in a headlock, and gave a headlock takeover after she made those comments. You know, I think Ronda is somebody that speaks from her heart too. And that’s something I can respect. She felt a certain way. She felt like, ‘Hey, the world that she came from, MMA, you know it’s different from WWE,’ and I’m really big on people being allowed to have their own voice. Their own perspective, and while I might not have agreed with her on her statements because I have the utmost respect for everything we do in the WWE, it’s her opinion, and she is allowed to have her own opinion. And it’s like very much in politics, which I never discuss, my political views with anyone.
“But, I believe that everyone is allowed to have their own views, their own opinions, their own ideologies of what they think is right or wrong. It’s part of being in a free country. But, when it comes to what Ronda said about, you know, wrestling being fake, I disagree with her on that because there are only a handful of men and women in the entire world who can do what we do,” she added. “And, I think she knows that as well as anyone because it is tough as hell to do what we do. This is a very, very, very hard industry. But, she has her views, and I respect her views, but I don’t agree with her views.”
Rousey hasn’t appeared on WWE television since WrestleMania 35 back in April 2019, though she has teased the idea of appearing at the Royal Rumble this Sunday.
