Ronda Rousey has a lot of praise for Paul Heyman, referring to him as the “backbone” of the wrestling industry. Rousey spoke with SHAK MMA for a new interview promoting her new graphic novel Expecting the Unexpected, and you can see some highlights below (courtesy of Wrestling Inc):
On Heyman: “I feel like he’s the absolute backbone of that industry, that people don’t see the backbone — it’s hidden underneath the body — but he’s literally everyone’s mentor… They should be lucky to have his time because he could be spending that genius on anything else, but he spends 100% of his time and energy on the WWE.”
On Heyman being supportive of her: “He is the person that told me: you need to go and write your own story. And no one really saw me in that light before or had that kind of belief in me, and I didn’t even have that kind of belief in myself… Finally laying in bed for the first time in 48 hours, I sat and typed in a cast on the notes on my phone for 11 hours straight to write the first draft of this and it was something that was sitting inside of me, and Paul Heyman was the only one that saw it.”
On her graphic novel: “I’d finally gotten away from that part of my life of like, you know what? I’m retired. I’m gonna do whatever I feel like, and I feel like writing a graphic novel, and here it is,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter, I guess, if people take it one way or the other.”
On a potential appearance at a UFC event: “I mean, it’s just one of those things that, like, I don’t really want to go to a stadium full of people for fun. I’d rather, like, be out on my farm or like on the beach or something else like that. I think [I] just have to have like a reason to go. I don’t know, if my kids end up fighting or something like that, or someone I end up coaching, you know, ends up fighting, I would go.”
On not being into the scene anymore: “It’s like not really my scene anymore. When I was younger, I wanted to put on a hot dress and go to the fights and hang out with everybody, and I’m just, like, kind of like an old lady that just wants to sit at home and sip tea. Plus, I wouldn’t want to go just to, like, [say] ‘Oh, I wonder how people are going to react to me?’ I would want to have like a reason to go or something. But we’ll see, I’ll play it by the ear.”
