Ronda Rousey: 'From idolising Hulk Hogan to UFC, everything in my life, has led me to WWE'

Ronda Rousey will make her WWE in-ring debut teaming with Kurt Angle against Stephanie McMahon and Triple H at WrestleMania 34.

The former UFC icon shocked fans by appearing at the end of the women's Royal Rumble and revealing she had joined WWE in January.


Wearing the leather jacket of the inspiration for her 'Rowdy' nickname, WWE great 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper, the MMA megastar had finally arrived.

At the Elimination Chamber, she renewed a rivalry that began when she helped The Rock outwit HHH and Stephanie at WrestleMania 31.

Informed by Angle that the bitter couple were trying to manipulate her, Rousey ended a contract signing by slamming The Game through a table.

Triple H gained revenge by sucker punching Kurt, but the Raw general manager responded by making the huge match in New Orleans on April 8.

Ahead of the hotly-anticipated bout, Rousey, 31, spoke exclusively to Mirror Sport about her incredible journey from the octagon to the squared circle.How's life as a WWE superstar?

They're spoiling the hell out of me, ha ha. I'm having an amazing time.

There was so much speculation about you signing with WWE, which was finally announced after you appeared at the end of the first women's Royal Rumble match in January. Congratulations on keeping fans guessing until the last moment! How was that whole experience for you?Well getting there was quite an experience itself, in the age of social media and cellphones it's really hard to smuggle yourself into the country unnoticed. That was an experience in itself. I started calling myself Rapunzel after a while, because once they snuck me from Colombia [where Rousey was shooting the movie Mile 22] to Miami, they put me in a private plane which took me to Pittsburgh, then took me to a car, then to the back of a hotel, then they had to block off the elevators and room service had to go past a security room, so room service wouldn't even see me... a car took me from the back of the hotel to meet me at a rendezvous point to take me to a bus, the bus then drove me to under the arena, and then I had to sit on a bus for seven hours! Ha ha.

It was quite the covert operation and I can't believe we even pulled it off, I really can't. It was really funny to see people go from 'she's totally going to be there' to 'she's not going at all' and then 'we knew she was going to be there'! It was really cool to kind of be able to surprise people like that, because it's hard to surprise people these days. I really wanted to just add to the event and not take away from it and I felt because of that moment, more people were aware of the first women's Royal Rumble and they [the women superstars in the match] got more of the attention they deserved because of it.

It was a memorable moment. A lot has been made of the fact you were a WWE fan growing up. How did that come about and who inspired you?

I grew up in The Midwest, in North Dakota, and WWE was very big when I was a kid. I had an obsession with Hulk Hogan, before I could even talk because I had trouble speaking as a kid. All I wanted for my birthday was a Hulk Hogan Wrestling Buddy. When they finally figured out that Volgrin meant Hulk Hogan, because I couldn't talk very well. I ripped that thing's arm off! Like several times, my mom had to keep sewing it back on with dental floss. I don't know what that was foreboding for the future! Ha ha. Also it was girl's toy, so we drew moustaches on him, an additional moustache, a curly evil one because we made him a bad guy in our games. Remember those toys that had different colours of candy on them and they smelt of different stuff? I forget what they were called, but anyway I thought Hulk Hogan deserved to smell just as good, so I covered him in vanilla extract, so he would smell like vanilla. Ha ha. That was my favourite toy ever growing up.

Even in our play room we didn't have stereos or anything like that, but we had a WWE video game, and every single profile page had every walkout song, so we would just keep clicking on the profile page and listen to that song on loop for a while, then the next one, then the next one. For entire summers that was our soundtrack to everything, Volgrin and My Little Pony listening to "Money, money, money, money..." [Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase's theme song]. It was such a pure and happy time.It sounds a lot like my childhood. When did you start considering it as a career?

When I started to get older, like I still really idolised Hulk Hogan for being the biggest, toughest guy on the planet. I didn't even know there were women wrestlers back then, I thought it was only men, to be honest. But I wanted to be that. I wanted to be Hulk Hogan. I was a bleached blonde little kid and my sisters made fun of me for being blonde, because both our parents were brunette, like 'you're adopted!' You know, he was the bleached blond, toughest guy in the world, I felt like I was like him. I found out later wrestling was scripted and it broke my heart, ha ha. I kind of fell away from it for a little while, but I still had that dream of wanting to be the biggest, toughest guy in the world. I started doing judo, that was how I was going to try and do it, and then started doing MMA, and that was how now I was going to try and do it.

When I was doing MMA, I met up with [WWE NXT superstar] Shayna [Baszler] and Jessamyn [Duke] in Ultimate Fighter, and we all started living and training together. At the end of the day, we didn't want to sit around and talk about fighting, we didn't want to watch sparring footage, Shayna would have us - I didn't even know how to operate my own television, I couldn't even put it on - Shayna was the lord of the television and every single night we were watching wrestling. That became our group activity at the end of the day, we would train all day, then run home to all watch wrestling together. It kind of like brought it back into our lives as an escape from all the stresses of everything else. And I really got to almost be reintroduced to the industry.

When I was a kid I felt so bad when I found out it was scripted, but as an adult, I understood, how intricate and complex and almost more difficult it is, because it's not... because it is scripted, there's so much more of an art to it that I didn't really realise. I think I had to be older to have that point of view and I had to have already been a fighter to give it that respect. It's really been a journey to get here. After a while it became that watching WWE became my escape from the stresses of fighting. It slowly became more and more where I felt like I wanted to be and slowly I started to let go of my denial and face up to the fact that everything in my life, I feel like has led me here. And everything happens for a reason. I look back on this path as the perfect recipe to be where I'm at.How have you found adapting to WWE and the process of your wrestling training?

Well, there are a lot of adjustments. There are things that are similar from judo and MMA, where you just have habits, that you have just drilled into yourself, and it's kind of hard to unlearn things that you have learned to do without thinking. I think the teamwork aspect of it is what I've needed and I've been drilling the most into myself mentally and physically, that I don't have to do everything. I can work together with my opponent and make the match even better than I could on my own.

That I think is the biggest adjustment, really trusting in somebody and working together with them to create something great, instead of working against them to create something great. It's almost like a relief, to not feel alone in my endeavours, and that I actually have somebody else who wants the same thing and it's just as important to them that it works out.

In WWE you also have to get on a microphone and address a live crowd. Fans can be unforgiving at times, but your arrival seems to have been met with an overwhelmingly positive reaction. How much does that mean to you?

I wasn't expecting that to be honest. In judo I've been booed in 30 different countries over 10 years. I never heard anyone cheer for me once, ever. I didn't know what it sounded like until MMA and even then, I would get booed and cheered, I would never get an overwhelmingly positive response. And I loved that, it was always the crowd competing with each other. I really thought like coming over into WWE, that a lot of people would resent me for it and feel like I didn't deserve the opportunity and try and do everything they could to sabotage it. I walked out honestly expecting the worst in people. And I received the complete opposite.

All that emotion on my face was actually real, I was expecting to get booed out of the arena. And I still am a lot of times when I walk out there, ha ha. You know? Because if my relationship with the public in general was a relationship with an actual person, it would be the most dysfunctional relationship of my life and I probably would have took that person out of my life a long time ago.

So it's hard to trust people to not break your heart when you go out there. So I get out there with a very thick skin and ready for everybody to try and like, I don't know, screw me up somehow... But the open arms I received coming into the industry, it makes me want to cry every time I think about it. And I know any day from now that could switch and they could decide they hate my guts...That's wrestling - it's only ever just around the corner.

Yeah, but I wouldn't even feel bad about it at all! Now I feel like I would be making [Roddy] Piper proud if I got booed so loud I couldn't even hear myself talk and I would smile and think of him. And I hope everybody else would be too. I wasn't expecting a warm welcome and when I received it, I feel like even though my years of being an athlete have kind of jaded me, I feel like I thought wrestling would harden me more, but I think it's making me soft. Ha ha.You will be teaming with Kurt Angle against Stephanie McMahon and Triple H at WrestleMania 34 . How excited are you about that prospect and being paired with someone like Kurt, who is not just a WWE icon but an Olympic hero, who perhaps better than anyone can help you adjust from combat sports to sports entertainment?

It's an absolute honour to be in this match at all and to have someone like Kurt working with me. He was my absolute hero when I was a kid, because all I wanted was to win an Olympic gold medal and not only did he win an Olympic gold medal, he won it with a broken neck. To turn from a little girl who had to run laps with a broken toe, because 'what if it happened at the Olympics?', because he set the example of what happens if you break your neck at the Olympics... and for him to have already successfully made this transition and to help guide me through the process, I'll say this expedited process ha, I really feel like I could have no better mentor than him in this match. I'm extremely grateful and lucky and I know that we're going to tear the house down.Watch WWE WrestleMania 34 live on the WWE Network or Sky Sports Box Office on Sunday, April 8.