Ronda Rousey and Jon Moxley are two of the most accomplished and well-respected talents in the world of combat sports. The former UFC champion and the former WWE champion have continued to find success after leaving the Stamford-based company, and now Ronda is opening up on the real Jon Moxley.
The Baddest Woman On The Planet has mixed feelings about a WWE return, telling Uncrowned’s Raj Prashad that she could never be on the road with the biggest wrestling company in the world due to the schedule now that she’s a mother of two, adding that WWE did leave the door open if she wants to return in the future. WWE did not contact its 8th Women’s Triple Crown Champion for the recent Evolution PLE.
Uncrowned noted that Rousey can be more selective on her projects these days, and that was the idea behind her post-WWE bookings with Sami Callihan’s The Wrestling Revolver, Liz Fairbairn’s Lucha VaVoom, and Tony Khan’s ROH. Rousey brought Marina Shafir along for her brief indie run. The longtime friends and MMA Horsewomen teamed up to defeat Taya Valkyrie and Brian Kendrick, one of Rousey’s early trainers, on October 26, 2023 at Lucha VaVoom’s Area 51 event in Los Angeles. She surprisingly finished up with WWE just 82 days earlier after losing a MMA Rules match to longtime friend and MMA Horsewoman, Shayna Baszler, at SummerSlam in Detroit.
After the five-minute tag team match at the Mayan Theatre in LA, Rousey and Shafir fought ROH Women’s World Champion Athena and Billie Starkz to a 14-minute No Contest at REVOLVER Unreal. The pay-per-view was held on November 16, 2023 at Homenetmen Glendale Ararat in Los Angeles.
Ronda Rousey Praises Jon Moxley In A Major Way
The Problem and Rowdy Ronda invaded the AEW-ROH TV tapings one night later at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, defeating Athena and Starkz in 16 minutes for a match to air on ROH HonorClub TV one week later. Since then, Roderick Strong’s wife has solidified her spot with Jon Moxley and The Death Riders, while Ronda Rousey has written books and focused on family. Speaking to Uncrowned, Rousey revealed that she and Tony Khan did not have talks about “anything forward-thinking” as she had the chance to wrestle with her longtime friend Marina Shafir, and she did.
Rousey admits she hasn’t really kept up with The Death Riders, but she enjoys seeing Shafir “coming into her own in that space and feeling really confident and just becoming like a real f***ing pro,” noted Uncrowned. The first female UFC Hall of Famer commented on Shafir’s progress, and credited Moxley’s support and help for that development.
“Going from being like, ‘How do I do an arm drag?,’ to being part of five-star matches and stuff like that, it’s really great to see her just having so much joy with it and rising to the top level of the industry,” Ronda Rousey said.
The Purveyor of Violence is actually the most incredible human being to ever live, according to Rousey. She praised him for being an overall great person, and pointed out how his friendship has helped Shafir.
“I think so much has to do with Jon Moxley being the most incredible human being ever. He is just so supportive and so kind and so passionate. He’s just so humble and I feel like so much of that success stems from his talent — and not just his talent, but his willingness and passion to give back and to bring up everybody with him and have his rising tide lift all of their boats. And I’m so grateful for him and the kind of friend that he’s been to Marina,” Ronda Rousey said.
Ronda Rousey continued and said having people like the former Dean Ambrose of WWE in your locker-room is what allows each new generation to build and outdo the ones that came before them. She used “real lifeblood of the industry” to label Moxley and the grapplers like him, adding that she hopes these efforts continue to make the industry rise in cultural awareness.