Ronda Rousey wanted to honor Kurt Angle on the road to WWE WrestleMania 38.
The former UFC standout made her WWE in-ring debut at WrestleMania 34, where she teamed up with Angle and defeated Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. Several years later, Rousey has become a top star in WWE. After she took some time away, she returned at the Royal Rumble in January and went on to challenge SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair at “The Showcase of the Immortals”.
In a new vlog on her YouTube channel, Rousey chronicled part of the journey to this match, including her SmackDown promo where she explained that she uses the ankle lock to pay homage to the WWE Hall of Famer. “The Baddest Woman on the Planet” explained that Angle was her first mentor in wrestling, and he has been her hero since she was a kid.
“I just really wanna be able to put over Kurt as the whole reason that I’m doing the ankle lock, and it’s a way to pay homage to him,” said Rousey. “And that’s all I really care about getting out because he was my first mentor in this business, and I never really got to honor him outside of our tag. I mean people compare us all the time because we were athletes outside of WWE and then came to it. As an Olympian, he has been like my hero since I was a little kid, so I love that he gave me the blessing to use the ankle lock.”
Rousey then recalled how she battled “What?” chants during the promo. She described how she tried to push through them by running through her message until an intentional page when she mentioned Angle’s name.
“Everyone was like, ‘Your rhythm seemed off, what were you worried about?'” said Rousey. “And I was like I was watching the second one, and Brock is like the most over face in the company right now, and they were doing the ‘What?’ chants to him when he was talking. So I was like, oh if they’re gonna ‘What?’ him, they’re gonna ‘What?’ the f— about of me. So I just wanted to blow through it to the point where the first break in when I was talking was after I mentioned Kurt because if you ‘What?’ Kurt, then you’re an asshole.”
Flair defeated Rousey at WrestleMania 38, but they’ll clash again in an “I Quit” Match at WWE WrestleMania Backlash.
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