Who Was Behind Savage Ronda Rousey Raw Promo?

Monday’s episode of Raw was fairly mundane for the most part with the exception of one killer segment, in which Ronda Rousey tore apart the shell-shocked Bella Twins. Or, as she might put it, she eviscerated them.

WWE writers were given a ton of praise for nailing what fans want the Ronda Rousey persona to be. They were also credited for having the testicular fortitude to directly express most critics’ biggest complaints about the Bellas. Few promos on WWE television have hit so close to the bone.

It turns out the plaudits were aimed in the wrong place.

It has since come to light via Bryan Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Radio that Ronda’s brutal promo was not the work of WWE’s battery of script writers but of the Raw Women’s champ herself.

Ronda wrote every word of the promo. From the crowd-pleasing lines about John Cena and the term “Divas” to some of the rather unusual choice of words (the smallpox reference, for example) in her epic tirade, the whole thing was entirely hers.

Fans and critics alike have been crying out for years about WWE’s horribly scripted promos and the wooden, stilted delivery of the verbiage that inevitably follows. If only Vince McMahon and his crew would accede to conventional wisdom and allow others on the roster the same opportunity to speak freely.

Paul Heyman does it and his promos are some of the best around. Ronda is inexperienced but she did it superbly. Without off-the-cuff unscripted promos there would have been no Austin 3:16. No Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. No D-Generation X. The entire Attitude Era would never have gotten off the ground had the characters been written into oblivion.

Food for thought for WWE, surely.

• Bellas
• RAW
• Ronda Rousey
• wwe

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