Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque (real name Terra Ryzing) doesn’t look like a brilliant executive, but he is. He’s the founder and senior producer of NXT, and Executive Vice President of Talent, Live Events, and Creative for WWE. In a recent interview with Kevin Iole for Yahoo Sports, Triple H offered an insightful theory on why Rousey’s career ended disastrously, with near media silence and losses to Holly Holm at :59 of Round 2, and to Amanda Nunes in just 48 seconds.

I think one of the things that hurt Ronda, and I mean hurt her emotionally, is that she put on a persona to fight much like what we do, he explained. And again, she grew up as a fan and kind of did the Mayweather and put on this persona. She went all-in with it, but nobody could separate the two. She was judged by that.

“But also, you have to look at the human being. When you’re a little kid and your mom is waking you up in the middle of the night and is putting an armbar on you so you can try to figure out how to get out of it, there’s a different level of expectation. Second place was never an option. Even if she won, it was, ‘What were the failure points in that win?’ So the way she handled the reality of that and the theatrical of that blended and became this mishmash of stuff that was difficult to deal with.

Triple H recalled a time when Rousey chuckled as he walked into an arena to perform for the WWE. He asked her what was funny.

“She said, ‘It’s the first time I walked into an arena like this and not hated everybody here. I’m not at combat with everyone. I walked in with my normal mentality and everyone was like, ‘Hi Ronda,’ with big smiles, and five seconds later I realized, everybody here is not against me.’ … She was like family. She never had that before,” said Levesque. “Her instinct was to walk in a building and … every single eye she looked at, every single person she ran up against, was a competitor to her, even the promotion. … When you’re trying to talk about this, it’s different worlds and I don’t think, unless you went through it you can understand.

Here, she was eliciting a response and everybody knew she was eliciting a response, and she actually got great enjoyment out of eliciting a response by making it like she was breaking down the wall of the response she was trying to elicit. It became this game, right, and she loved it.

Rousey left the WWE in April to start a family with husband Travis Browne, who left the UFC on a four-fight losing streak. Levesque said Rousey plans to return to the WWE.