It hasn’t been a week since WrestleMania 36 and Ronda Rousey is back talking WWE, bashing its fans and being alluded to as a bully by one of its female stars.

This could be coincidence. Rousey could just be having some fun. Or it may be Rousey and WWE are laying the groundwork for a heel run upon the former Raw women’s champion’s return to the ring.

Rousey, who is signed with WWE through 2021, was asked by the former MTV “Jackass” star on the “Wild Ride with Steve-O” podcast on Friday if it was “conclusive” that she wasn’t looking to go back to the company. She did not say yes. She responded that if she did come back to WWE, it would not be full-time, but for “chunks” of time.

Rousey said her schedule during her first run with the company – from January 2018 to April 2019 — took her away from her family too much, and she blamed the fans for her no longer wanting to make a full-time commitment.

“What am I doing it for if I’m not being able to spend my time and energy on my family, but instead spending my time and my energy on a bunch of f–king ungrateful fans that don’t even appreciate me?” said Rousey, who stepped away from WWE to try to have a baby with husband Travis Browne while raising Browne’s two sons from his previous marriage. “I love performing. I love the girls. I love being out there … but, at the end of the day, I was just like, ‘F–k these fans, dude.’ ”

Rousey also revealed she had broken vertebrae in her lower back upon signing with WWE. So even when she was home, she was in a “recovery position” with a heating pad on her back and Tempur-Pedic pillow under her head.

“I love the WWE. I had such a great time,” Rousey said. “I love all the girls in the locker room. Running out there and having fake fights for fun is just the best thing. … But I was doing basically part-time and I was away from home 200 days out of the year. And when I did get home, I was so sleep-deprived cause you just don’t have time to lay down.”

Rousey hasn’t appeared on WWE television since losing to Becky Lynch in a triple-threat match with Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 35 that had a little controversy in the storyline finish.

“My family loves me and they appreciate me and I want all my energy to go into them,” Rousey said on the podcast. “So that was my decision at the end of the day. It’s like, ‘Hey girls. Love what you’re doing. I’m gonna try and take all my momentum and push you guys as far as I can. Fly little birds, fly! I’m going f–king home!’ ”

She followed her appearance on the podcast with a tweet saying, “When your trending again just hanging out at home…” and GIF that said, “Oh hi Mark.”

Her bashing of the WWE fans sounds very much like the Rousey who went off on the “Monday Night Raw” crowd on March 4, 2019, when she talked about being booed at Staples Center in her hometown of Los Angeles at Survivor Series (“I’m no longer here to entertain you,” Rousey said that night), and eventually said “f—k ’em” to WWE fans in her famous “wrestling is not real” video posted on her YouTube channel prior to WrestleMania 35 as Lynch became the company’s top babyface.

But Rousey’s comments on Steve-O’s podcast are at odds with her January appearance on WWE’s “After the Bell” podcast during which she joked that she would love to start “crashing” house shows and said there were parts of WWE’s travel schedule she missed. Rousey also was pictured with fellow UFC star-turned-pro wrestler Cain Velasquez at WWE headquarters in March, and teased a WWE return during a light-hearted Q&A session on her YouTube channel on April 1, when she didn’t rule out coming back “soon” to dominate Lynch, but said, “Trav and I are still working on that mom-daddy time, if you know what I mean.”

Rousey’s podcast interview with Steve-O came a few days after the freshly returned Nia Jax alluded to the former UFC women’s bantamweight champion on a Twitch stream with other WWE talent. Jax said her friend Alexa Bliss was “seriously getting hurt” while working a program with a “certain somebody.”

Jax, who returned on Raw this week after double knee surgery, noted that Bliss didn’t say anything because she wanted to be a team player, but Jax said she felt the need to speak up on her behalf. Bliss dealt with concussion issues in 2018 that were career-threatening. According to a WWE 365 documentary, Bliss suffered two concussions while working matches with Rousey.

“I personally would not allow her to get back in the ring to get hurt again,” Jax, who herself had a hand in injuries to Zelina Vega and Lynch, said on the stream. “I had to go to the people, the higher-ups, and I had to put down a stern foot, and said, ‘Listen, look, Lexi is 5-foot-nothing, 100 pounds, getting thrown around like a little rag doll and injured ever night.’ I was like, ‘Put me in. I’m a 6 foot, 300-pound bitch, I can handle it.’”

Still, if the table is being set for Rousey to return to WWE television, it’s hard to see where she fits into the storyline in the immediate future — especially while shows are being filmed on closed sets because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Lynch remains embroiled in a feud with Rousey’s friend Shayna Baszler, whom she beat at WrestleMania 36. Lynch keeping the belt at WrestleMania could be seen as the company buying time until the pandemic abates and it is safe for The Man to go ahead with plans for her wedding with Seth Rollins. Or the company wants Lynch to thoroughly dispense with Baszler to set the stage for a WrestleMania rematch and first one-on-one contest with Rousey. Though it’s possible Rousey could be inserted into a story in which she helps her friend defeat Lynch for the championship, that would delay the Rousey-Lynch rematch or mean either Baszler or Rousey would need to turn babyface.

But the bread crumbs are there if WWE and Rousey want to capitalize.