RONDA ROUSEY’S move to WWE started with the ice bucket challenge and involved the company secretly smuggling her from Colombia to the Royal Rumble.
The legendary former UFC bantamweight champion, 30, shocked the world as she made a surprise appearance at the wrestling pay-per-view on Sunday.
And it emerged after her staredown with Charlotte, Asuka and Alexa Bliss at the end of the women’s Rumble match that she has signed a full-time deal with WWE.
Hunter Hearst-Helmsley (real name Paul Levasque, WWE EVP of Talent, Live Events and Creative, has now revealed the full story of how the wrestling giants persuaded one of the planet’s biggest sport stars to swap the octagon for the wrestling ring.
Speaking to USA Today, Triple H explained: “I had heard about her being a big fan. There were a few things we sort of inadvertently connected with each other on without actually meeting.
“She came and did the Ice Bucket Challenge with Steph [McMahon] when we were in LA, and even then she kind of floated it out how much she loved [WWE].
“And just her knowledge of what we do was so deep. She would mention at the time ‘oh I’d love to do this. When I get done, this is what I want to do.’ She would always say that, ‘this is what I want to do,’ you know, but you hear that a lot. But over the years it slowly morphed into things. She did the stuff with us at ‘Mania, and we’ve just had conversations over and over.
“And then this year it really escalated. We had not been in contact other than a little text here and there… She called to ask about coming to the Performance Center, if she could come in there and be with a few of her friends for a Bachelorette party.
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“And we had a discussion about it, and during that discussion, boy, it really started to come up that this is something she was not just throwing out there or suggesting – it was something that she really wanted to do.
“It’s something that she’s really wanted to do the whole time. She was dead serious every time she mentioned it to me. On our end, you hear that a lot, it’s usually just people saying something. She was dead serious the whole time.”
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He continued: “It’s funny, there wasn’t pressure on the timing of this at all of necessarily the Rumble part. It really just came together. There wasn’t a lot of back-and-forth or like intense negotiations. It kept coming up in the media, and to be honest we had had conversations but we just hadn’t – between her schedule and my schedule – we just hadn’t sat down and said ‘what do we want to do here?’
“And she’s been training this whole time, specifically for WWE. She’s been training intensely this whole time, and I knew that and I knew what her intent was, but we had yet to sit down and have that deep conversation about it. Once we did, the timing just worked out. Once we did, it went extremely quick from there.
“She was sending me bits and pieces of training footage along the way, so I knew she was serious. It was just a matter of getting time to sit and talk. Once we did it was really quick, and it was a thing like ‘hey, I’m ready to go now if you want me to do something right away.’ So that changed our thinking, and we went from there.”
Speculation has been rife for months that Rousey was considering an offer to join WWE and with WrestleMania season now in full swing, rumours of a debut at the Rumble sufficed.
But Rousey has been in South America filming her latest movie and shared a post on Instagram of her in Colombia less than 24 hours prior to her bow in WWE.
And Triple H revealed the operation put in place to ensure that only a selected handful of people knew of the plan for the MMA queen to be in attendance at the Rumble.
He added: “As it was coming down to making the decision we wanted to do this, there were a lot of last-minute things. She was in Colombia doing the movie. Trying to get somebody on a flight that is as famous as Ronda is, and as visible as she is – and internationally she’s almost bigger than she is in he U.S. – on a flight, into the country, through customs, clear security, on another flight to Philly, shuttle to a hotel, into the service entry, brought to a bus, hidden in the arena the whole day, and not until right before she walks out there does anybody see her.
“It was a monumental task, it took a large team. But it’s all for trying to create a moment for our fans, and trying to create a moment for the world where you just have… while people expect it, they don’t know. And it’s so difficult now because the second somebody is seen somewhere, social media is all over it. The world cannot wait to be the person to say ‘I was the one who saw her,’ or ‘I broke this.’
“So when you’re able to pull off something that’s a big surprise like that, it’s great. Trust me, we all kept it very, very quiet on all fronts. Very few people knew… there was only a handful at best that knew.”
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