Ronda Rousey was solely two fights into her MMA profession when she signed with Strikeforce. Quickly after, she turned one of many faces of the game and helped usher girls into UFC.
It’s been documented many instances over that UFC CEO Dana White famously mentioned girls would by no means struggle within the octagon, however Rousey turned the game-changer that altered his imaginative and prescient for the promotion. However all the way in which again in 2011, Rousey was simply an up-an-coming fighter hoping she might make sufficient of an impression for somebody like White to note her.
Wanting again now, Rousey admits she felt a accountability to get White’s consideration, particularly with the information that girls had been probably on the slicing block after UFC bought Strikeforce.
“Individuals neglect how fragile that state of affairs was and the way last-minute I used to be in a position to get us in,” Rousey instructed Chris Van Vliet. “Strikeforce was the one group that was actually showcasing girls and that was due to Gina Carano, as a result of her dad was concerned with the Nevada Athletic Fee and was in a position to sanction fights for her and all this stuff.
“When she was gone, Cris Cyborg’s pumped to the f*cking gills with steroids. Nobody desires to look at that dishonest ass bitch. Every thing simply tanked. The division was dying. The UFC purchased Strikeforce and it was assumed they had been simply going to soak up the entire male expertise that they preferred and fold the entire group, as a result of that’s what they did with PRIDE, that’s what they did with WEC, that was their enterprise mannequin. So there was a matter of time.”
Previous to Rousey’s arrival, Carano was undoubtedly the largest star in girls’s MMA, however she successfully left the game in 2009 after she suffered a first-round TKO loss to Cris Cyborg. Her departure from MMA didn’t cease Strikeforce from selling girls’s fights, however Rousey knew UFC shopping for the group was going to probably change all the pieces.
From that second ahead, Rousey made it her mission to get consideration by any means obligatory, and her devastating finishes mixed along with her penchant for the dramatic every time she touched a microphone helped her turn into a celebrity.
“I used to be the primary lady signed to Strikeforce because it obtained purchased by Zuffa, and I used to be introduced in to exchange Gina Carano as a result of she was supposed to come back in for a comeback however she wasn’t medically cleared to come back again for her match,” Rousey mentioned. “So she pulled out and so they signed me to struggle that very same chick, Sarah D’Alelio. So I knew the clock was ticking.
“It was only a matter of time earlier than they closed the entire thing and there could be nowhere that may showcase girls’s MMA, so I had that a lot time to be sure that Dana [White] couldn’t go a single day with out seeing my title someplace. The remaining is historical past.”
Even after White determined to advertise girls’s fights in UFC, Rousey nonetheless didn’t really feel like she was standing on strong floor.
At the start, girls solely had one UFC division and it was headed up by Rousey alongside along with her appreciable skill to attract a crowd. Even after UFC dedicated to a deeper roster for ladies and a number of divisions, Rousey nonetheless wasn’t certain what would occur if she simply determined someday to stroll away.
“As soon as girls had been delivered to the UFC, [Dana] mentioned, ‘That is an experiment, that is to see the way it goes,’” Rousey mentioned. “It obtained to a degree the place we needed to see how it will go with out me as a result of it was so depending on me.
“Whereas, I feel if I retired undefeated and left, I don’t know what it will be like. As a result of they’ve already introduced within the [145-pound] division and closed it. They’re not in opposition to closing divisions.”
Lately, UFC promotes three completely different girls’s divisions, and whereas no feminine fighter has reached stratospheric ranges of fame like Rousey, there’s loads of girls’s expertise on the prime of the game.
Rousey issued a reminder to the present crop of UFC fighters — female and male — that all of them share a accountability that goes past simply coaching exhausting and exhibiting as much as compete.
A part of the explanation she was in a position to persuade White to carry her and the ladies’s division into UFC was as a result of she commanded a lot consideration. Rousey believes extra fighters have to take discover that their job goes thus far past simply combating.
“I feel one factor individuals don’t perceive now as fighters — and those that do perceive it do extraordinarily properly — it’s like, you need to promote your struggle as exhausting as you practice for it,” Rousey mentioned. “Lots of people really feel so safe of their place that they’ll simply present up and struggle and they need to get all the pieces thrown at them. It’s not the corporate that promotes you. You shouldn’t expect the corporate to spend all this cash to advertise you. What are they going to do? Make extra commercials? You must go on the market and promote your self. You must go on the market and be a personality and make your fights right into a story, and the issues that I realized from professional wrestling.
“Earlier than I even obtained into there, I used to be attempting to carry that into girls’s MMA, and I feel a whole lot of them neglect they’re not supposed to only be athletes however entertainers. It’s not one thing you do on the aspect. It’s one thing you do equally as exhausting and put simply as a lot time and effort and focus into. Lots of people simply consider it as a trouble or one thing they must do as a result of the corporate makes them do it. That’s why you see some individuals which are completely unimaginable and nobody outdoors of MMA has ever heard of them.”
UPDATE: Cyborg has responded.
