As mentioned in our most recent Rumor Roundup, Pro Wrestling Sheet’s sources told them Ronda Rousey missed the Mar. 12 Raw in Detroit after being announced for appearances every Monday night on the Road to WrestleMania due to a communications error around scheduled medical testing in Pittsburgh.
Now, in the “plans change” world of WWE, it’s not too difficult to imagine a scenario like Sheet describes - that the company’s website team wasn’t aware of Rousey’s appointment when they ran the story hyping her Raw schedule, their social media team picked it up and promoted it because they assumed it had been approved at the highest levels, and no one caught it until this week when they found out about the conflict and went about scrubbing the web of its existence.
Another, more logical explanation - to this writer, anyway - is offered by PWInsider’s sources. Their report says Ronda was travelling to WWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut on Monday to “prepare for her WrestleMania showdown against Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.”
Which makes sense - working your first pro wrestling match is going to require some practice, especially before you debut on “The Grandest Stage of Them All”. And we’d expect WWE to book a mixed tag with a novice, someone who’s never been more than occassional in-ring worker, and two legends who now are part-timers, at a micro level. Rousey just talked nerves she’s experiencing about possibly looking “stupid” at ‘Mania - and mentioned rehearsing a lot - in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres about transitioning to WWE.
Insider also says Rowdy’s tag partner for April 8 in New Orleans, Kurt Angle, was in Stamford practicing with her, though. And Angle found a way to Detroit for appearances on this week’s Raw. Couldn’t Rousey have done the same?
It’s a weird look either way, and one that could have been avoided if WWE wasn’t so anxious to advertise Ronda as a “full-timer” who loves wrestling SO much. She needs to train! Even haters get that!
Rousey is advertised for the next three Mondays in Dallas, Cleveland and Atlanta. As long as she doesn’t have any other appointments we don’t know about or mandatory Monday practices, that is.
Author’s note: This article has been updated to correct the timing of PWInsider’s account (I misread the time stamp on Mike Johnson’s post and made an incorrect assumption about his reference to “yesterday”). The rest of my musing on the situation stands - mostly that WWE brought this on themselves by promising Rousey for every Raw until April 8.