Charlotte Flair Stuns Ronda Rousey To Retain Title

Ronda Rousey suffered her first pinfall loss in WWE as Charlotte Flair retained the SmackDown Women’s Championship.

The match was filled with shenanigans as Ronda Rousey thought she had the match won before referee Charles Robinson waved off a three-count due to Charlotte having her foot on the rope. Following a ref bump, Robinson missed Charlotte tapping out. Charlotte came back with a boot to the face, surprisingly winning the match as a +425 underdog against the heavily favored Rousey (-800).

Ronda Rousey-Charlotte Flair Build Fell Flat

Ronda Rousey’s return has been a boon for WWE’s business, with viewership and ticket sales rising whenever the former UFC megastar is advertised. And while Rousey and Charlotte were brilliant during the build to their previous WrestleMania 35 showdown, that spark simply wasn’t there throughout the buildup to their singles match. Much like WrestleMania 35, many fans preferred the one-on-one confrontation between Rousey and Becky Lynch that they thought they were getting in 2019.

A far cry from the heated promos and wild backstage brawls from the build to WrestleMania 35, Rousey and Charlotte’s storyline was a basic war of words with Rousey implementing a couple new submission holds to prove she is not a one-trick pony. Poor build aside, If the match itself was going to be anything like their previous one-on-one match at Survivor Series 2018, fans were in for a treat.

Controversy Surrounds Ronda Rousey, WrestleMania 38 Main Event

Though it was assumed Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair would main event Night 1 of WrestleMania 38, the go-home broadcast of WWE Raw suggested differently. Kevin Owens proclaimed he and Stone Cold Steve Austin would main event Night 1 of WrestleMania as Austin’s appearance seemed more and more like it would be closer to a full-blown match. Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Radio (h/t Wrestling Inc) went on to report that Austin and Owens would indeed close Night 1 of WrestleMania.

During an appearance on The Ellen Show, however, Rousey proclaimed that she would be main eventing WrestleMania.

“I’m gonna be in the main event for the second time,” Rousey said. “I was the, part of the first main event with women and this is now the third. So, it’s becoming almost something that doesn’t need to be mentioned anymore, which is the goal,” Rousey told Ellen. From a technical standpoint, this was the last official match on the card, so in a sense, it was the main event.

Rousey’s return to WWE has not been without its roadblocks. Still scarred from the notoriously fickle nature of WWE’s fanbase, Rousey had to be coached into her role as a babyface after a bitter end to her previous stint.

“I got through it and I came out and Heyman was like, ‘You did great, but I’m going to tell you, he’s going to tell you one thing, he’s going to tell you to smile,’” said Rousey during an episode of Ronda on the Road.

“I’m like, okay. So I went and talked to Vince,” she recalled. “He was like, ‘That was fantastic. Just — you need to smile.’ 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 this relates to myself, and I was forgetting that this is a show about entertaining them.’”

With Rousey chasing the WWE SmackDown women’s championship after losing by nefarious means, Rousey and Flair are almost a shoo-in for a rematch at WrestleMania Backlash.