8 Intriguing Implications Of Brock Lesnar At UFC 200

t’s an open secret that the WWE and Ronda Rousey have been champing at the bit to work together properly since someone at the company realised what a massive mainstream star Rousey was, and that she’s a huge WWE fan (back in the day, she even nicknamed herself ‘Rowdy’ Ronda Rousey after the late Roddy Piper, with his full and happy consent).

That star has fallen a little with her humbling loss to Holly Holm seven months ago, but a UFC comeback and a defiant reclaiming of the bantamweight title would restore much of her diminished prestige, even without that vaunted winning streak.

There’s a case to be made that the powers that be at WWE were only persuaded to move with the times and give time, emphasis and credibility to their Divas because of the massive crossover stardom of Ronda Rousey.

Standout women’s matches on the NXT developmental brand may have proven to them that they had the talent necessary to pull it off, and provided the template for the main roster’s new women’s division, but it was Rousey that convinced them that women could be taken seriously by the public as fighters (and for the record, that ‘them’ isn’t Vince McMahon, who’s privately appalled by the ‘barbarism’ of MMA, and loathes the idea of women participating).

They tested the waters at WrestleMania 31 last year with The Rock’s introduction of Rousey to the WWE audience, and were ecstatic with the response she got, both from the fans and from the media. A feud with Stephanie McMahon was teased, but never materialised due to Rousey’s UFC entanglements.

However, they’ve never given up on the idea. Scuttlebutt (like gossip’s badass baby girl) says that Stephanie McMahon has been training like a loon this year, and is in the best shape of her life.

From day one of the so-called ‘Diva’s Revolution’, Stephanie’s been front and centre, acting the passionate, convicted babyface as she spearheaded the movement. She's recently stepped into the Women's Championship storylines, again as a babyface authority figure, despite years of storyline megalomania and vicious power plays.

There are any number of ways to go with that characterisation, but the easiest is to consider that Stephanie is setting herself up to be physically inserted into the women’s championship hunt, only to swerve the babyfaces and take the title for herself leading into next year’s WrestleMania.

It may be that, rather than Lesnar having WWE over a barrel and demanding his own way, as usual, that the company has decided to leverage Lesnar's pull with the UFC to get themselves in bed with Zuffa… and swap one UFC legend for another.