Ronda Rousey was the first-ever female UFC Champion and put women’s MMA on the map, but a lot of fans began criticizing her fighting skills after her losses to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in 2015 and Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 in 2016. After her final fight, Rousey only made one more UFC appearance, when she got inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018.
During an interview on High Performance, Rousey explained she doesn’t attend UFC events anymore:
“I don’t know, ask the MMA media that. They are the ones saying it. That I was a fraud and I was hype and I was exposed and I was never anything and just lucky and all of these things. And that I wasn’t gracious or a good loser, or you know every other thing. I feel like I’m really vilified by MMA media at this point and I’m not really welcomed back, which is why I haven’t gone to a UFC fight since, because I’m pretty sure if I walked into the arena, I’d be booed. Yeah! That’s how it feels.”
When asked why fans’ criticism bothers her so much, she replied:
“Why? I guess I wish it didn’t but I gave them everything I had and that 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 but I realized it was enough for me but not for people on the outside. But it really wasn’t for them.”
As we have reported before, Rousey revealed that she kept her severe concussion history a secret during her UFC & WWE runs, which also played a big factor in her two devastating UFC losses and eventual retirement:
“I’d like people to understand my reasons and motivations behind things. I was forced to leave fighting when I was faster, stronger, more skilled and had a better understanding of the art than ever before. A really hard decision to understand, but one that my body really made for me. I feel like this is the only way to really get that across in the best, most complete way that it’s not just a tweet and a headline short.”
During an appearance on MMA on Sirius XM, former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Miesha Tate (who faced Rousey twice and lost both times by submission) had the following to say about Rousey’s comments:
“It certainly seems like she’s holding on to the resentment, the frustration, the anger and allowing it to dictate her next move. I personally do not think that the MMA community, in large part, ever turned their back on Ronda. She forgot that there were hundreds of thousands of little girls around the world that were still idolizing her. They didn’t care if she won or she lost. They thought she was amazing either way. I think she’s still really hurt by it, but I think she’s still very focused on self, instead of self-growth.
I think she’s still focused on, ‘Well, this is what happened to me. All these people turned on me. I had all these concussions happen to me, and nobody was thinking about me.’ It’s like, well, hang on, it’s not quite like that. People beat you down a bit. It comes with fame.
Nobody gets away unscathed in this life, much less if your life is put on a magnitude scale where everybody gets to witness your rise, but they witness your fall, but this happens to every champion. This is not a Ronda Rousey versus the world situation. When you are great, sometimes people just want to see greatness fall, but that’s not the majority. Most people are healthy individuals living their life and they were wanting her to continue her success and they enjoyed it and those people were forgotten about and that’s just kind of sad, you know?”
WATCH: Ronda Rousey’s Nip Slip From 2022:
