Ronda Rousey said this week that the reason she won’t attend a UFC show anymore is because the moment she returns to an arena, she’ll be booed on site.
A former UFC women’s bantamweight champion, Rousey won 12 straight MMA fights — half of which were title fights in the UFC — until Holly Holm de-railed her reign with a head kick and punches, inflicting a maiden loss in 2015. Unable to bounce back from that defeat, Rousey lost a second successive time to Amanda Nunes in 2016, and never set foot in an Octagon again.
Would she attend a UFC show, though, Rousey doubts she’d be well-supported due to a tempestuous relationship with what she described as the MMA media, as well as the sport’s fanbase.
Rousey Says She Won’t Attend UFC Shows
Rousey believes she’d be booed if she ever set foot in a UFC arena
In a podcast interview with Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes for High Performance on YouTube this week, Rousey said she was vilified by the media, and would not feel welcome at UFC events — both numbered PPV shows, and the smaller fight night events.
Rousey said: “Everything that could be said that was negative was said, and I feel really vilified by MMA media at this point and not really welcome back, which is why I haven’t gone to a UFC fight since [losing to Nunes in 2016, and then retiring].”
“I’m pretty sure if I walked into the arena, I’d be booed. That’s how it feels.”
Rousey later said she feels like she knows what it’s “like to have everyone hate you.”
She added: “I live it. I wish it didn’t [bother me]. I gave them everything I had, and it wasn’t enough. But that’s why a lot of people don’t give everything that they have, because they don’t want to face it if it wasn’t enough. I realize it was enough for me, but not enough for people on the outside. But it really wasn’t for them.”
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Rousey’s comments arrive little more than one month after a former UFC commentator, Jimmy Smith, ripped into Rousey during an episode of the ‘Unlocking the Cage’ podcast.
“Everybody behind the scenes that had to put a mic on Ronda Rousey couldn’t stand her.”
Smith continued: “I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘She was a b**** to us from the moment she sat down to the moment she got up. Like it’s our fault she has to do this interview to hype something or her next fight and she’s just miserable and she’s mean to us and we can’t stand her…They were cheering when she got knocked out. This is what I was told.
“Those are the people you can be mean to and rude to, and they can’t fight back. Those people couldn’t stand Ronda Rousey. So, don’t sit here and tell me you’re the victim.”
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