Could a match between Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair headline WrestleMania 34?
Well, that's certainly what Flair would like to see happen on April 8 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.
"I hope that's the main event of WrestleMania," she told ESPN. "That's my dream. I hope we can make it happen. She really opened the doors for a lot of women. Having that opportunity would be huge. I don't know what her goals are, but it's just cool that she wants to be a part of our world."
Rousey, the former UFC women's bantamweight champion, hasn't competed in the UFC since losing to Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 on Dec. 30, 2016. While she hasn't officially retired from the UFC, she seems interested in making the transition to WWE. She was filmed backstage during the WWE Mae Young Classic with her fellow "Four Horsewomen" of MMA, who were in Orlando, Florida, to support their compatriot Shayna Baszler, who was in the tournament. The trio was confronted by Flair, Becky Lynch and Bayley, themselves part of a quartet called the "Four Horsewomen," (along with Sasha Banks) teasing a possible future feud.
The WWE started featuring women more prominently in storylines, television shows and pay-per-views during the past few years, and Flair believes that was directly related to Rousey's success in the Octagon. The past two pay-per-view cards Rousey headlined drew 1.1 million pay-per-view buys, and the one before that did 900,000 buys. The only other UFC fighters to attract those kinds of numbers regularly have been Brock Lesnar and Conor McGregor.
"I thank Ronda for opening the door for us," Flair said. "If Ronda had never been given that main event spot as a female and doing what she did with it, I don't know if we would have ever been given that chance.
"Yeah, we were killing it at NXT, but I don't know if the main roster audience and the business side would have thought the women could carry the main storyline and main event a pay-per-view and we did and I think that's because they saw how popular Ronda was and if you give us a storyline, we can deliver and we did deliver, so I want to thank her."
EXCLUSIVE: @MsCharlotteWWE @itsBayleyWWE & @BeckyLynchWWE cross paths w/ @RondaRousey @MarinaShafir & @jessamynduke at the #MaeYoungClassic! pic.twitter.com/Ipc7YW5nv2
- WWE (@WWE) September 4, 2017
Rousey isn't the only female UFC fighter who's teased a jump to the WWE. UFC women's featherweight champion Cris Cyborg has often hinted at wanting to be in the WWE, including a war of words on Twitter with Becky Lynch, and recently said she'd like to face Rousey, not in the UFC, but in WWE.
"It's exciting to know that there could be a crossover," Flair said. "We see it with the men all the time and it's such a big attraction. I want to be an attraction for the WWE as a female and I think having those women be a part of the company in some kind of storyline makes the women an attraction. Were we an attraction at WrestleMania 32? Yes, but Brock Lesnar, he's an attraction. I want to be that and with Ronda Rousey or Cyborg. I think that would be exciting."
Flair, who is currently promoting "Second Nature," an autobiography about the legacy of her father, Ric Flair, and her career, recently took time away from the WWE to be with her father after he was rushed to the hospital last month, suffering kidney failure and on the verge of congestive heart failure.
"He's good. He went home last week," she said. "I'd say a couple of positive things came out of it. I had to take two weeks off, which is the longest I've taken off since I've started. So I was able to slow down and realize it's a marathon, not a sprint. Having that time with my dad was so great and it also made my dad realize that he's 68. He has to slow down. They really did tell us that he wasn't going to make it. That was so hard. They gave him a 20 percent chance and we said our goodbyes and then he made out of surgery and every day, he slowly got better."
After losing her brother, Reid, to a drug overdose in 2013, Flair didn't want to think about life without her father, even as she was saying goodbye to him last month.
"I was so numb when I found out," she said. "I had already lost Reid and for me, my dad is the biggest part of my life and I couldn't imagine not having my dad to call before every segment. Those were the things going through my mind. What would this world be like without him? I wasn't ready for that. It didn't feel real. I just sat there thinking that this isn't going to happen. I didn't let myself go to that place."