Author's note:

There are original characters in this series which were created by my readers. I offered the chance to have a character feature in the story and selected the ones I liked the most from the submissions I received. I'll list the characters and their creators below so that everyone has the credit they deserve for creating them.

May Devany - created by Willow Edmond

Anna Hollenbeck - created by Debwood-1999

Alexis Styles - created by Shiki94

Sarita Lopez - created by Chaka1967

I thank all of the people named above for the use of their characters and the time they put into creating them.

May 2016

Steve Austin was not a man who was known for being nervous. Steve Austin was Stone Cold. Steve Austin was cocky, arrogant and confident, some would even say to a fault, but those folks were probably pansies. Steve had interviewed everyone from The Queen Bitch Dixie Carter to the Granddaddy of Wrestling itself, Vince McMahon, and never once did he feel anything before a podcast but confidence in himself to knock the interview out of the park.

On this evening however, Steve felt something close to nervousness. The uneasy feeling was not caused by the actual prospect of interviewing his guest, far from it. Actually, he expected the conversation to flow quite well. The reason that Steve was uneasy was that he had gotten the interview that so many people had wanted. It was the interview that every wrestling podcast out there had been desperate to get. It was the interview that literally millions of people around the world had been waiting seven months to hear. This was, without a shadow of doubt, going to be Steve's biggest podcast ever, and for that reason it was being streamed live on Youtube.

Steve was brought out of his thoughts by one of the crew members bringing two glasses of water to the table, setting one in front of Steve and the other in front of the chair opposite him, which was currently empty. At that moment, Steve's guest walked into the studio. It was almost time to get underway.

Following the podcast's short intro sequence, Steve Austin was shown in close up, wearing a black T-shirt with a large white skull logo which had red eyes inside of it. "Welcome, everyone, to the Stone Cold Podcast Live!" Steve smiled. "This week's guest is someone I've definitely been looking forward to talking with. Just like you guys, I'm very keen to hear her side of the story on several big topics, and rest assured, we're going to stay live tonight until we've covered all of them. This ain't going to be no bullshit interview where you come away going. 'Why didn't he ask that fucking question, damn it.'"

Steve smiled once more as he made an introduction. "This week's guest is former WWE Divas champion, the toughest woman on the planet, Ronda Rousey!" The camera shot panned out to now include both people who were sitting at the table. "Ronda, welcome."

"Thanks, Steve. I appreciate you inviting me to come on," Ronda smiled back. She was wearing a light grey muscle tee with her now instantly recognisable logo on the front, in black. The logo was essentially just the letters RR, but the design was very elaborate and well done. "I see you got your wristband," Ronda giggled, gesturing at Steve's right arm which sat on the table top.

"You're shitting me, right?" Steve laughed, lifting his right arm slightly. "If I tried to do this interview without getting me one of these, I'd probably never hear the last of it. While we're talking about it, why don't you show us the original?"

"Sure," Ronda agreed easily, holding up her right wrist so that the camera could zoom in the black wristband. It was made from some kind of fabric rather than plastic, and looked to be of high quality. Ronda's RR logo was printed onto the material in gold, along with the motto Win and lose together.

"How many of those things have you sold now?" Steve asked as Ronda showed the wristband to the camera.

"Honestly? I really have no idea," Ronda admitted. "I'd been wearing this one for a while, but when I left WWE and decided to try selling them, I never expected that they'd take off like they did. I think it started off as a way for WWE's fans to show support for me after what happened, and it took off from there. We had a serious backlog with not being able to make them fast enough at one point, so I had to get Adidas to step in and take over production for us." Ronda rolled her wrist over to reveal that her name was personalised on the underarm side of the wristband. "A couple of celebrities got pictured wearing them, and that made them take off even more as the thing that everyone wanted. I guess it's the whole win and lose together thing. It's transcended wrestling at this point. Then, for some reason, WWE tried to stop people getting in with them at Raw that one time, and we know how that blew up in their faces. You might have thought they'd have learned, huh?"

The camera zoomed back out to the regular shot of Ronda and Steve again as Steve spoke. "If you look at it from WWE's point of view, though, it didn't look good that every time there was a Divas match everyone in the crowd was standing there holding your wristbands up and chanting your name. It got fuckin' crazy."

"Whose fault was that?" Ronda shrugged, clearly implying that WWE had only themselves to blame for what she was referring too.

"I guess we'll find out later, when we come to it," Steve said a little awkwardly, trying to steer the subject back to where he had really wanted to begin the show from. "Because of the time we've got available, we're only going to talk about your time with WWE tonight, without touching on your success at the Olympics or any of that stuff. You first started out as a referee. How did that come about, because it seems strange for someone with your background and in the shape that you're in to be a referee rather than a wrestler?"

It was a, uh, a difficult time for me," Ronda began, her voice sounding a little distant as she looked down at the table top for a moment. "I'd injured myself. Specifically, I'd broken my neck when I fell off a horse. You know how traumatic an injury like that can be, Steve, but those who haven't experienced something like it can't really imagine it. It was a living hell."

Ronda paused to take a deep breath and a sip of water, while Steve sympathetically nodded his agreement with what she had just said. The brief pause seemed to help Ronda to recompose herself, and she continued speaking with more confidence. "By the time I joined WWE, I was fine physically, but mentally I was struggling. I was afraid to take any kind of bump on my neck. I'd been a referee in a couple different indie companies over a period of months, and then I heard that WWE were looking to hire a female referee. I applied, and they invited me down to Florida to try out. Hunter was down there at the time, and he stopped by to watch us for a while. I think he was sold on me then and there to be honest. I could tell that he was asking questions about me while I was in the ring. Sure enough, I got the call a few days later. I expected to be put on NXT or something, because I honestly suspected that WWE were treating the whole thing as a marketing ploy or a publicity stunt more than anything else, but I was told to show up for Raw."

"They put you on Raw before you'd even refereed a match for them?" Steve asked, raising his eyebrows. The haste with which Ronda had been pushed onto the big stage surprised him.

"Yeah. Hunter was good about it. To be fair, Hunter was always good to me. That never changed, even with what happened in the end. I'd like to make that clear. When I got to Raw that first afternoon, he made sure that I knew that he was there if I needed anything, and he did a good job of making me feel like I belonged there. Aside from the thing with my neck, I've never been someone to lack confidence anyway, so I was just keen to get started."

Steve gave a knowing smile. This time Ronda's answer definitely hadn't surprised him. "I remember watching that Raw, and I remember thinking that you looked good in the ring. I mean, sometimes people underestimate the role that the referee has to play in a wrestling match, but I could see that you were good. You had a great count, I remember that. I know what it's like backstage though, there must have been people who gave you shit because they didn't like working with a woman?"

Ronda laughed dryly at the memory. "Yeah, it did happen. Some of the guys would make little comments to let me know how they felt without actually saying it, but I knew the time would come when someone would try and fuck me around in the ring. Sure enough, Cody Rhodes decided to be that guy. I think it was on a Smackdown. It was definitely on either Smackdown or Raw, I know that. He was a dick the entire match, ignoring my counts and all that bullshit, just trying to make me look stupid and crap at my job, basically."

"You must have been pissed off," Steve said, stating the obvious rather than asking a question. "What happened when you got in the back?"

"Pissed off? I was fucking livid," Ronda scowled, her face transforming into arguably her most famous expression. "I called him on his bullshit in front of a bunch of guys in a hallway, but rather than apologising, he carried on. I remember him calling me sugar tits. I was ready to cripple the fucking guy and I told him to come at me, but then Hunter showed up and stepped in. Actually, after Hunter made everyone leave us be, that was when I told him that if possible I would like to get into wrestling rather than refereeing. I was with Seth Rollins by that point, and he'd helped me a lot with dealing with my mental problem with my neck. Things started to happen really quickly from there."

This was the kind of interview that Steve liked the most. His contribution was minimal, and only served to steer the conversation along slightly, while Ronda said what she had to say. He knew that the people who were watching were doing so largely to see and hear from Ronda rather than himself, so that was what needed to happen as much as possible. "You weren't a referee for all that long, as I remember it, so this thing with Cody couldn't have been long after you joined WWE, yet you just said you and Seth Rollins were already together by that point? Things must really have developed quickly with the two of you as well?"

"They really did," Ronda nodded, before sipping from her glass of water again. "Seth and I just clicked. So much so that we went for dinner after that first Raw show that I worked. Seth's not one to waste time when he sets his eyes on a woman," she added a little coldly, clearly referring to events which had happened much later and were now public knowledge. "Anyway, at that point things were great between us. I felt a lot better about my neck, but I still wasn't confident in it by a long shot. Seth offered to start me off on my training with taking basic bumps and all of that stuff, and Hunter agreed to give him the time off from house shows to do it. As with anything in life, I went at it hard and gave it fucking everything. The guys they've got down in Orlando are really good at what they do, that's for sure, and the facilities are second to none. My neck didn't give me any problems, and I finally managed to get it out of my head and feel confident in the ring."

Steve got a cue from the show's producer, telling him that the introductory part of the show was done, and that he needed to go to a brief commercial break before continuing with the next subject. "By this point, Wrestlemania Thirty One was coming up, which was where you ended up making your return. We'll go into that in just a couple of minutes when we come back."