Ronda Rousey knows that social media is not the end-all, be-all.
WWE star Ronda Rousey recently appeared on the Wives Of Wrestling podcast and discussed the good (and bad) of social media when it comes to getting an accurate view of how someone is doing at their job. Rousey says that she knows social media can cause people to feel like they yearn to belong, but she doesn’t allow it to shape her opinion of her work in the ring.
“That’s not an accurate sample of the population,” Rousey stated. “If you look at statistics on your socials, say, you’ll get like a million or so…like a couple million people that’ll like look at something, then a couple thousand that’ll hit like and maybe a couple hundred that have commented…maybe a thousand, maybe two thousand and then like the very small part of that are the dickheads that are just sending emojis. So, if you think about it, there are people that I have not-so-great opinions about that I don’t spend any of time going into all of their social media and [responding].
“I just don’t think about them at all in my life and I think a lot of times, it really helped my perspective when I was like, this person, whatever they think about anything else in their lives, whatever they think politically or what their favorite color is or whether they think ranch or blue cheese should go with Buffalo wings,” Rousey explained, “I don’t give a damn about anything that they think except for the thing that’s about me. That’s just being narcissistic right there and I just need to let that go. It’s an instinctual thing and we’re social creatures and social standing is like ‘oh my God if my village doesn’t like me, they’re gonna throw me out to the wolves’ and in your brain, you wanna make sure that everybody likes me so I don’t get thrown to the wolves. But you kind of also have to think, ‘okay, nobody’s going to throw me to the wolves, I live in East Los Angeles’ [laughs] ya know what I mean? It’s fine, just walk away, it’s cool.”
Ronda Rousey, while appreciative of both the fans’ cheers and boos, isn’t worried about what the population thinks about her in-ring work and puts more of an emphasis how the live audience week-in, week-out reacts to her showing.
“Well, I don’t really need to know what people think about my work, you know what I mean? It’s kind of like if you go to an art gallery, right? And there’s the artist there like, ‘I threw the paint on this f-cking thing’, they don’t wanna stand there and explain to them what their pain splat means and they don’t care what other people think of their paint splat,” Rousey explained, “they were feeling a thing and they splattered their paint and it’s there for you to make of it what you will. I don’t think really how it’s received matters too much. I guess the feedback I get is a live audience and a lot of times what you would think is coming online and what the live audience is expressing are two opposite things.
“Case and point, Royal Rumble, I left as a heel and was getting booed out of every stadium and that’s what I assumed everyone thought and I was still a heel and even in interviews that I was giving in the meantime, I was still talking sh-t on the fans, being in character for in case I come back and that’s what I assumed I would come back to. And when it ended up being not that reaction, I was really, really surprised. I was almost too guarded to let them make me happy in that moment. But I don’t know if I would’ve thought otherwise by looking at comments or anything else, you know what I mean? So, whatever the live audience is leaving with is what I’m assuming people feel like in general because the internet is not a good sample.”
Rousey is set to challenge SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair in an ‘I Quit Match’ at WrestleMania Backlash on May 8.
Related: Women’s Wrestling Wrap-Up (4/19/22)
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