WWE Money in the Bank had a fair share of surprises this year, one of which included an unexpected betrayal from Shayna Baszler.

Heading into Money in the Bank, Shayna Baszler and Ronda Rousey were slated to defend their Unified WWE Women's Tag Team Championships against Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez. That match started off in a routine manner, but later took a turn as Baszler attacked Rousey and locked her in the Kirifuda Clutch. This move ultimately allowed Morgan and Rodriguez to pick up victory and regain their tag team gold.


As revealed by Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, the plan for Baszler to turn on Rousey had been plotted for a while, but was delayed, partially due to Rousey sustaining an arm injury. With Rousey's "hard out" date approaching, though, WWE finally pulled the trigger on her feud with Baszler.

"This was always, always, always the plan," Meltzer said. "It kept getting delayed and then Ronda got hurt and the thing was - and I don't know the date, and it might be SummerSlam, it might be a little bit after - the deal is that Ronda has a hard out. She gave a date, 'This is my last date.'

I remember talking to somebody there and it's like, 'I know they're going to do this, and I guess, make the big match for WrestleMania.' And it's like, 'No, her hard out is...' - they didn't give me the date but it's long before WrestleMania," he continued.

As Meltzer explained, Rousey is expected to depart from WWE soon. Before Rousey leaves, though, she was insistent on feuding with her long-time friend Shayna Baszler, whom she credits as the one who introduced her to professional wrestling.

After setting Baszler and Rousey up an on-screen tag team, they hoped to gradually tease their dissension, but that idea became virtually impossible to fulfill as Rousey dealt with her injury.

"Based on whenever that out is, they had to get [the feud] done now. This was the latest they could go. Yeah, they wanted a long title reign to build it up and to do the whole thing where you can see the stuff coming, the little teases and everything. They didn't have time. Things just got screwed up. Really it was the broken arm that screwed it up more than anything else but that's what happened," Meltzer said.

As of this writing, it's unknown when exactly Rousey's "hard out" date is, but with it happening sooner rather than later, WWE decided that now was the time to ignite the rivalry between Rousey and Baszler.