WWE’s Original Plans For Ronda Rousey vs. Shayna Baszler

At WWE Money in the Bank 2023, Shayna Baszler snapped in a sadistic attack on Ronda Rousey and cost them their WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship.

Baszler unleashed a shocking and barbaric attack on Rousey, leaving her high and dry in the middle of the ring. This allowed Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez to blast Rousey with their combo finisher for the pin to win the Women’s Tag Team Titles.

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter is reporting that WWE’s original plan was to give Baszler’s turn a slow build, but injuries and the upcoming expiration of Rousey’s contract caused the creative to change gears.

“The match was really a backdrop for Baszler’s turn on Rousey. It was clearly a heel style turn, but the decision was made, clearly from television, to have Baszler be the babyface, with the idea she had to pay her dues, work in front of 30 people, set up rings and such while Rousey walked in and her first match was at WrestleMania. It’s playing on the idea that Rousey didn’t deserve to be pushed in WWE, even though nobody ever did more to help women’s wrestling and fighting than Rousey in the big picture.

The Rousey & Baszler tag team was always put together for the storyline is a break-up and a feud. That dated back to when Rousey made the call of when she was leaving. It’s not known the date, whether it’s right after SummerSlam or they’ll take the program longer. But Rousey gave the office a finishing date of this run, and asked to be put in a tag team with Baszler and to feud with her. Baszler helped Rousey greatly, and really taught her a lot about pro wrestling when the two lived together and would watch wrestling together, and attend shows together like at PWG.

So Rousey wanted to pay her back by giving her a program that she otherwise wasn’t going to get. Between Rousey’s injury and other changes with the office being slow to get it started, they had no time to really establish them as tag champs or do the traditional slow build that was the original idea. The idea was to give them a lengthy reign and then do the split, but that didn’t work out.”

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