Ronda Rousey Is FURIOUS With WWE Fans
Ungrateful, avocado-eating millennials.
On a night both wonderful and strange, at Survivor Series, the Los Angeles crowd turned on Ronda Rousey about nine months into one of the greatest rookie years in pro wrestling history.
A curious development on the face of it, stranger still, this reaction followed a particularly vicious beatdown that itself followed the sort of incendiary, believable match most fans wish they could see more of. Ronda and Charlotte Flair crafted something that didn't look remotely crafted. It was a brutal, exciting fight, after which, cementing her heel turn - for which she was received as a superstar babyface (!) - Charlotte assaulted Ronda with a kendo stick and a steel chair.
As Dave Meltzer pointed out on Wrestling Observer Radio, Ronda looked furious. Great as she has already proven to be at selling, this was different. A sensitive performer who has worn her heart on her sleeve in both the octagon and the squared circle, she looked profoundly upset as she retreated up the entrance ramp. One heckler said something, unspecified, that triggered Ronda into a response. That response was unmistakeable: "You're not a man," she mouthed, with quite a bit of sass.
Is Ronda's perception of what constitutes a "man" part of the issue? In recent weeks, for reasons known only to herself, Ronda has taken to raging against "millennials", and their avocado-munching ways, which apparently has not endeared her to WWE's predominantly liberal, adult male audience.
If not that, then what?
Is Becky so over that Ronda is now a heel by default? Is Becky so over that there now exists such a thing as "Becky Dust", and whomever she sprinkles it over (Charlotte, in this instance) is over through association? Are WWE fans so wary of any push plotted with conviction, in this Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar era, that those performers who win a lot are now automatically rejected with a cynical "Super" prefix?
Or is Ronda simply a natural, IRL heel, and fans are now responding in kind?
To editorialise briefly, this was harsh. Ronda just put a damn war on. But, if this is the beginning of an enforced heel turn, 1) there'll be no babyfaces left by December and 2) Ronda will be amazing in the role...if she can bring herself to learn to love the heat.