Kurt Angle welcomed SmackDown Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey as his guest on the latest “Kurt Angle Show” podcast. Rousey was on to share stories about her days in UFC and WWE.
Ronda let everyone know that the original Four Horsewomen were herself, Shayna Baszler, Jessamyn Duke, and Marina Shafir and not Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Bayley, and Sasha Banks:
“The good thing is that there’s something called the internet and you can really cite these things. We didn’t even claim it. Our fans started calling us that because women’s MMA in the beginning, there weren’t any powerhouses for women’s MMA at the time.”
“So after The Ultimate Fighter, Shayna and Jessamyn moved in with me, and Marina, and we had like all these women that are extremely talented in MMA and all training and supporting each other which wasn’t happening anywhere at the time. You’d be lucky if you came to a gym and saw another woman in general. So our fans started calling us that, The Four Horsewomen.”
“So then one day Shayna said, ‘Let’s take one of those iconic pictures like the Four Horsemen. So we took some pictures that were like throwbacks and stuff like that. Then that’s how it happened. So we didn’t label ourselves that. Our fans labeled that.”
“Then when we came into the WWE, Stephanie started putting us over as a Four Horsewomen and everything like that. So even the company itself called us the Four Horsewomen first, like there’s no argument, there’s zero.”
Rousey credit Brian Kendrick with training her:
“He started at Santino’s. He opened up the place and came and worked with me. I think he refused to take money from me for training. Me and Jessamyn were trained together for a while before she moved to Florida. Then after that, he would bring in different training partners for me. He set me up with other people to work with when he wasn’t around. I didn’t have a network of people to train with out here. I entirely credit Brian Kendrick for any kind of fundamentals that I had and anything like that.”
Ronda was asked what happened with the controversial finish of her match at WrestleMania 35 regarding her shoulder:
“I didn’t think my shoulder was down. I was trying to flatten out to put my shoulder more down. That’s what was happening. I thought it was just the very tops of my shoulders, so I was trying to shimmy down so the actual back of my shoulders was down and I didn’t know that he had already started counting, so I’m worried that my shoulder came up during the shimmy. So I was trying to help, but it ended up being awesome because now I have a gripe to revisit. That wasn’t on purpose. I apologized about that one. It wasn’t until later that I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, my bad.’”
