The worlds of WWE and the UFC are pretty much tangled up for good under the TKO umbrella, but that doesn’t mean crossing over from the ring to the cage is easy. While few professional wrestlers, such as Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley, have had decent success in MMA, former WWE champion Becky Lynch confessed that she, too, had considered entering the Octagon.

The inspiration? Getting absolutely manhandled by Ronda Rousey during their legendary pro wrestling rivalry.

“Wrestling her (Ronda Rousey), there was one time when she beat me up,” Lynch said on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story. “And I remember thinking, not because I could fight back, but I was like, ‘Oh, I can take a beating. Maybe I could go into MMA? I think I can take it.’ But then, that lasted one week. Actually, one week is generous.”

It didn’t take long for Rousey to catch wind of the comments, and the former UFC icon responded on social media with a classic reality check.

“Lmao, what she doesn’t realize is that I was very, very nice to her😂,” she wrote on X.

And, based on her unbelievable return to MMA by obliterating Gina Carano in 17 seconds, it’s hard to doubt the 39-year-old’s claims. Now, her MMA record stands at 13 wins in 15 fights, with 12 of those wins coming in the very first round. That’s a record that’s hard to replicate in MMA. While Ronda Rousey clearly believes ‘The Man’ would be mauled in the cage, Becky Lynch has her own receipt for the former UFC bantamweight champion’s abilities inside the squared circle.

‘Rowdy’ has been extremely open about her dissatisfaction with WWE since departing, but Lynch previously pointed out that the UFC legend was far from perfect between the ropes.

“She was coming off a different industry,” Lynch told the MMA Hour back in 2024. “She was a star, and she should have been handled differently in terms of—I think she had such a great first outing that everybody thought, ‘Oh, she can wrestle.’

“I mean this with respect, but she couldn’t wrestle.”

Becky Lynch suggested that Ronda Rousey’s highly praised debut was simply carefully rehearsed and carried by veterans such as Kurt Angle and Triple H. Needless to say, both women are probably better off staying in their own fields. But you can never say never when it comes to combat sports, since ‘Rowdy’ did appear at AEW Revolution 2026 earlier this year in March.

And to make things more interesting, despite their bitter on-screen rivalry, the two never actually faced off one-on-one despite being one of the hottest rivalries in the WWE and personally pitched by Ronda Rousey.

Why did Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch never come to fruition?

Despite anchoring one of the most red-hot, genuinely bitter rivalries in wrestling history, ‘The Man’ and Ronda Rousey never had a singles ring. While the two were set to face each other at Survivor Series in 2018, a freak concussion forced the Irish superstar to withdraw.

By the time they ultimately headlined WrestleMania 35 in a historic milestone for women’s wrestling, Charlotte Flair was added to the mix, denying fans the pure, unadulterated singles fight they so truly wanted.

When ‘Rowdy’ returned for her second WWE stint, the failure to book the mega-match wasn’t on her. In fact, she personally pitched a massive, year-long storyline to the then-WWE boss, Vince McMahon.

“After WrestleMania, I literally printed out a whole presentation for them, for me and Becky—the singles match,” Rousey told The Takedown on SI. “How we would do it, how we would plan it out and rehearse these things and have them woven throughout the show. To do something really exceptional and new.

“And then Vince and them were like, ‘Oh yeah, this is a great idea, this is great.’ Then I went and had my baby, I came back, and they were like, Well, we talked about that a year ago.”

Upon her return, instead of the epic storyline she had pitched, the promotion sent both women down separate tracks. Rousey was booked to feud with Charlotte Flair, and ‘The Man’ faced Bianca Belair. This move by the creative surely took the wind out of Ronda Rousey’s sails and served as a major trigger for her exit from the Stamford-based promotion.