Shayna Baszler has shared new insight into her MMA Rules match against Ronda Rousey at SummerSlam 2023, admitting that several factors “handcuffed” the bout creatively.
Speaking with Ariel Helwani on The Ariel Helwani Show, Baszler revealed that the Ford Field stadium setting presented unique logistical hurdles, including the absence of a central jumbotron and no feasible way to incorporate a cage or Fight Pit structure between matches.
She said, “We were very aware that in a stadium environment, that sort of match to a pro wrestling crowd is going to be hard to see. And we were kind of counting on this jumbotron, but the stadium didn’t have a jumbotron… a lot of people were talking about, like, why wasn’t it a cage match? They didn’t have the structure in a stadium… if we had been like the men’s title picture… they could have built the cage around it. But because we were not the last match, there was no way to quickly cart the pieces of structure out, build it, and then take it back down for the next match.”
The biggest challenge, according to Baszler, was timing.
She disclosed that Ronda Rousey had a “hard out date” for her WWE departure, forcing the storyline to be rushed instead of unfolding over a longer program. “Ronda having a sort of hard out date kind of handcuffed us… we had to do the story now. I think it would have been better served to have that sort of match as a blow off after a longer feud… the handcuffs were not, like, you’re not allowed to do this. It was more just the circumstances of the events, the time, and the venue.”
Baszler was released by WWE earlier this year, while Rousey exited the company following the SummerSlam match.
The full conversation is available below.
