Shayna Baszler can lastly ship on her Ronda Rousey toast at WWE SummerSlam

Shayna Baszler can lastly make good on a promise she made to Ronda Rousey as their friendship started to bud almost a decade in the past – simply not in the way in which she envisioned.

With Rousey on the peak of her UFC prowess dispatching opponents in a minute or much less, the 2 turn out to be shut on UFC’s “The Final Fighter” sequence in 2013, on which Baszler was a contestant.

Round that point, Baszler – who had been combating professionally since 2006 – hit a low level in her profession, breaking her ankle earlier than she was presupposed to make her UFC debut.

She was going by a breakup and attempting to come back to phrases with the uncertainty of what got here subsequent.

Rousey flew Baszler out to her house in California and instructed her to dwell there along with her so she may deal with therapeutic and coaching with out monetary fear.

After one of many former UFC ladies’s bantamweight champions fights, her group of associates have been out to dinner – every giving an prolonged toast. Thanks when Baszler made her a promise.  

“It was my flip, I mentioned, on the time, ‘The easiest way I can thanks for altering every little thing for me is to provide the combat you deserve,” Baszler mentioned in a Zoom interview. “On the time, we expect I’m gonna clear out the UFC division and we’re gonna meet for the title and it’s gonna be epic and it’s gonna be the primary combat Ronda has that lasts over a minute.”

As a substitute of within the octagon, Rousey’s and Baszler’s first televised one-on-one assembly in fight sports activities will occur in a WWE ring in an MMA guidelines match at SummerSlam at Detroit’s Ford Subject on Saturday night time (8 p.m. ET Peacock).

“Now I’ve to present her the combat she deserves and it has a very completely different which means than we initially thought, however I feel it’s a full-circle second,” Baszler, 42, mentioned.   

The story they’re telling across the match connects proper again to their time in MMA, which the 2 specified by a well-crafted video bundle this week on “Monday Night time Uncooked.” 

Again then, Baszler accepted being a part of a staff Rousey led – regardless of her serving to to pave the way in which for ladies’s MMA – that was an integral a part of getting the then-champ prepared for her UFC fights. 

She noticed issues repeating themselves of their wrestling careers as Baszler was a high-profile ladies’s MMA fighter transitioning to the game in 2015 and signed with NXT in 2017. 

There she turn out to be a two-time ladies’s champion, holding the title for essentially the most mixed days – 549 – within the promotion. 

Early on, Rousey and her fellow 4 Horsewomen of MMA, Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke, have been typically proven as followers ringside supporting Baszler’s matches. 

All of it reignited a love for wrestling in Rousey, who jumped into the game along with her first match at WrestleMania 34 in 2018 with Baszler nonetheless in NXT till February 2020.

Rousey went on to win the SmackDown ladies’s championship twice and the Uncooked title as soon as.

Lastly changing into WWE ladies’s tag staff champions in Could with Rousey, 36, is what Bazsler mentioned sparked the necessity to assault her good friend in storyline at Cash within the Financial institution – even when it meant shedding the titles to Liz Morgan and Raquel Gonzelez.

It’s an try and lastly transfer out of Rousey’s shadow — one thing Baszler feels is “lengthy overdue.”

“I feel you may see the sample since now we have been alongside one another in WWE, I used to be eternally gonna be the sidekick, once more,” Baszler mentioned. “I gave her that in MMA, however I feel relating to wrestling it’s my factor now. I don’t assume there was anybody who was gonna beat me and Ronda [for years] after we have been on the identical time as a tag staff. I simply got here to this gradual realization that I’m the sidekick. That is the factor I’ve all the time dreamed of and labored for and I’m the sidekick?”

Baszler is a three-time WWE ladies’s tag staff champ however has by no means held singles gold in the primary roster even after her NXT success. 

In reality, she has solely had two televised singles title matches on the primary roster.

Baszler believes a win over Rousey at SummerSlam is usually a springboard towards pushing her approach into the championship image.

“As soon as all eyes are on me, then it’s a matter of solidifying my spot as that individual that if I can beat up Ronda Rousey then who can’t I beat up,” Baszler mentioned. “You take a look at Ronda, even the losses she has had [in WWE] they’ve been a bit bit of individuals capitalized on a mistake or a fluke kind of factor. I need to beat Ronda Rousey definitively in a combat so there is no such thing as a query when my music hits (that) somebody is getting damage, win or lose.” 

Rousey has by no means been submitted in WWE and Baszler, whose ending transfer is the Kirifuda clutch submission, mentioned she “would love” to faucet her former good friend out.

She, nevertheless, thinks which may not be her greatest path to victory as a result of “you’ll have to tear each of Ronda’s arms off and beat them unconscious with them to ensure that her to actually say you received a combat.”

“I’ve to be keen to do what it takes to make Ronda bodily incapable of continuous to combat and the identical with [Ronda for] me,” Baszler mentioned. “I’m not even certain [tapping] is one thing she’s able to doing. We’ll discover out. We’ll push the boundaries.”

The majority of their story has been jammed into the final two months as Rousey missed a while with an elbow harm earlier this yr – delaying their pursuit of the tag staff championships.

It’s one thing that they had talked about since Rousey’s return in January 2022 and he or she did every little thing she may to be cleared earlier, Baszler mentioned – even being “within the again doing one-armed push-ups attempting to persuade them to “allow us to go!” 

Now, it’s Rousey who may very well be leaving WWE quickly as the Wrestling Observer reported she has a “onerous out” date for an exit that comes earlier than WrestleMania 40 in April. 

Baszler mentioned they don’t often discuss that stuff, however left the door open for Rousey to be leaving quickly, saying “possibly her plans have modified” now that they’re now not tag champs.

“If we had the titles, Ronda’s an athlete, she would have fulfilled the commitments she had,” Baszler mentioned. “She would have by no means left had we held the titles for 2 or three extra years. I feel with Ronda, it’s very ‘I don’t know we’ll see what occurs.’ There’s no title on the road [at SummerSlam], I beat the snot out of Ronda, who is aware of.”  

The 2 have purposely not tried to painting themselves as babyface or heel in an effort to make it really feel extra like a real fight sports activities combat the place followers simply root for whoever they like greatest. 

Baszler does admit that the scales have been tilted towards her as a babyface and he or she may depart this feud with some viewers goodwill round her for her first time in WWE simply because followers “like to hate Ronda” and “extra individuals hate Ronda than hate me.”

“I feel if I maintain Ronda and shut her up and possibly she does go away I feel for a second individuals are gonna respect me a bit bit,” Baszler mentioned. “I don’t assume I’m the kind of one that’s ever gonna be a babyface face in the way in which a Liv Morgan is or a Kairi Sane, these tremendous sympathetic [figures]. However I feel I may be individuals’s hero if they need it to be. Am I attempting to try this, not essentially.”     

Irrespective of who followers are rooting for, Baszler plans on making good on her promise to Rousey and giving her the combat she deserves and which means “win or lose, we ain’t popping out of this unscathed.” 

“Mentally and emotionally I’ve to have the ability to flip a change and get to this completely different stage of depth and settle for the truth that that is gonna damage, that is gonna be a bodily charged match, that is gonna be an emotionally charged match,” Baszler mentioned. “And it’s gonna be one thing that possibly places me in mattress for every week afterward simply how exhausting it’s.

“If I can get to the place the place we each dragged one another into the mud to attempt to drown one another, I feel no matter who wins this combat we aren’t going to have the ability to deny the opposite is the hardest particular person we’ve been within the ring with, whether or not that’s combat or professional wrestling.”