In a video on her YouTube channel, Ronda Rousey explained how she changed her feelings towards the fans thanks to some advice from Vince McMahon.
Rousey recalled being extremely sour when her first run ended: “I walked out of the stadium WrestleMania I mean, my knuckle was shattered. So I couldn’t even remember I kept trying to put my hand on my hip, I couldn’t even turn my hand and put it on my hip. Everyone was booing me out of the stadium. I was just like, ‘Man, f*ck these people, I can’t wait to go home.”
She expected to be booed as she returned, but came back anyway because she missed wrestling: “When I left WWE, I had been getting booed out of the stadium, like, every day for months. I think one of the most uncomfortable and disingenuous I’ve ever felt was when I had to be a babyface and the crowd was being hostile towards me. I couldn’t just tell them exactly what I felt. I did not come back. I was stuck between like me poke around. Do I stay true to myself until these people go out themselves or do I, you know, respect Vince, who has done so much for me, and not go against what he wants me to do? So when I finally got to turn heel, I loved it because I felt like it kind of finally got to be myself. I really missed wrestling I did and I wanted to come back. I knew I was coming back, or I thought I did to the animosity that I left. So I came out feeling super defensive from the beginning. At the Rumble, it wasn’t like that. But I just assumed the reaction was from the surprise. So coming out to Raw and Becky was gonna be there. I was like, ‘Okay, this is when they’re gonna troll on me the most. This is when they’re going to try and like chant ‘Becky’ every single time I open my mouth. This is the time they’re going to start like screaming the most hurtful things they can.’ I came out anticipating that, and everything went fine. Of course, there was like those three or four guys in the like on the floor that were just like screaming as I was talking and I really just had to concentrate to like, block them out.”
Vince McMahon reminded Ronda that it’s not about her, but the fans: “I got through it and I came out and Heyman was like, ‘You did great, but I’m gonna tell you, he’s gonna tell you one thing, to smile.’ I’m like, okay, so I go talk to Vince [and] he was like, ‘That was fantastic. Just smile.’ Now I was telling him like, you know, ‘They were booing me on the way out of every stadium. ‘He’s like, Yeah, but they’ve forgiven you for that.’ I’m like, ‘Well, I haven’t forgiven them,’ and he goes, ‘But it’s not about you. It’s about them.’ It was like such a good point that I’d been thinking about myself and how it relates to myself, and I was forgetting that this is a show about entertaining them.”
