Shane Douglas On If Ronda Rousey Can Succeed In WWE, Vince McMahon Needing To Focus On WWE Over XFL

Episode 33 of The Triple Threat Podcast is NOW AVAILABLE. This week Shane recaps the jam-packed Royal Rumble weekend that featured a large array of wrestling legends converge in Philadelphia for House of Hardcore, the ICONS of Wrestling Convention and the Royal Rumble. In this excerpt Shane discusses the arrival of Ronda Rousey in the WWE and Vince McMahon's XFL reboot . The full episode can be downloaded at this link.

Ronda Rousey's departure from UFC and arrival in WWE:

"She (Rousey) claims that she is not retiring from shoot fighting and that she (I guess) is alluding to this being a side career, and let's face it, anyone who follows UFC knows that pretty much her career is over as far as the UFC goes. She is a good looking woman, she's obviously incredibly athletic, has a lot of tools at her disposal from her experiences as a UFC fighter and I believe that she can be an incredibly effective talent for the WWE, but I think for anyone that follows shoot fighting and professional wrestling knows her career as a shoot fighter is effectively done and going to work for the WWE does nothing (because) this is not like Brock Lesnar jumping back and forth. For Ronda Rousey having gotten her ass handed to her in the last two or three fights that she had in the UFC and now going to the WWE I think pretty much closes that door to her. She may be able to get one more fight out of it with the UFC, but the Ronda Rousey that we remember from two years ago and two and a half years ago, that character died with the last loss that she had taken in the UFC.

"I think that said she could be something powerful for the WWE if and a CAPITAL LETTER 'IF' they build her properly, if they present her properly and she is willing to learn the craft and those are big ifs. I don't know Ronda and I don't know her attitude, but if she is willing to do that than let's face it she can obviously have strong crossover appeal but if they don't do that and try to expect her to run roughshod over the fact that she was a UFC athlete and a successful one in that time that doesn't guarantee that she's going to be able to draw a house in the WWE. Her first match is going to be the litmus test and I hope for her sake and for the wrestling fans sake that she takes the time to learn that craft and doesn't just think that, 'I'm Ronda Rousey from the UFC so the wrestling fan should just bow down to me.' I don't expect that to be the case with her only because of how diligently it seems she approached her matches in the UFC, but if she does try to do that, I am going to predict that she'll fall flat on her face. If she doesn't do that and she applies the type of professionalism that she did in he UFC, I think she'll be very successful with the WWE."

Vince McMahon rebooting the XFL:

"From where I sit and look at it, I don't see the WWE as a wrestling entity anymore and I know he'd say we are not wrestling we are Sports Entertainment. Call it whatever you want to, I don't see that the WWE is just rolling along on autopilot so well that nobody has to be concerned with pushing it forward. To the contrary and I would argue more than ever that somebody needs to grab it by the reigns and really focus on how to do we move the WWE to the next point and how do we reinvigorate our fan base, how do we draw those fans back that tuned out the (tens of millions that have tuned out) and what can we do and how can we do we get them back? I would argue that this is the last time and the worst time for Vince McMahon to be talking about starting another side project that draws even 10% of his time away from the WWE and let's face it, I am sure it will be far more than 10% of his time.

"To take it a step further the first time the XFL failed miserably. I had the chance to see the 30 for 30 on the XFL and it rekindled a lot of the things I had forgotten about the XFL. Vince is saying it is going to be a spring based league and not bring things from professional wrestling like the nicknames on jerseys and the coaches having angles. Based off of what Vince said in his announcement, what makes Vince McMahon believe that in the Spring fans of football are going to be willing to tune in to see a Spring based league after we've already seen the USFL with multiple billionaires (including Donald Trump involved) and including some of the best players in football that year to include the Heisman Trophy winner and some of the best players coming out of college that year and yet they couldn't make a real go of it. So what makes Vince McMahon believe that in the spring two years from now people are going to want to see 2nd, 3rd or 4th tier players who couldn't make it to the NFL play spring football? That is a big question mark to me."

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