8 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE SummerSlam 2023 (Results & Review)

Downs…

4. A Noble Failure

Shayna Baszler Ronda Rousey
WWE.com

WWE clearly went for something different with its MMA rules match between Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler, trying to capitalize on both women’s mixed martial arts backgrounds and deliver a unique match that would get people talking and might also serve as a “passing the torch” moment.

But the bout never really got unstuck and only picked up the pace at the very end. Yes, real MMA fights can start slow and involve a lot of grappling, but there hadn’t been a ton of build to really well this idea of a match to fans, leaving everyone to figure it out for themselves. Had they built this over a few weeks, maybe did training vignettes and explained how these contests could go, it would have worked better.

Baszler looked good overall, save for needing doctors to look at her, which could be viewed as weakness and giving her a reprieve mid-fight. Still, kudos to WWE for having Shayna win clean and being the first to submit Rousey. Just don’t squander that going forward.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.