Ronda Rousey is taking a much harder public swing at the UFC as she gets ready for her MMA return against Gina Carano. In footage released from her YouTube channel, Rousey said the promotion got too comfortable at the top, stopped fearing competition, and lost sight of the fighters who built its value.
Rousey said, “I feel like we’re in a crossroads for the sport, and this is the beginning of a big change that is long overdue.”
She followed that by saying:
“I meant it when I said that the UFC is suffering from a lack of competition. They’ve become too comfortable with being the dominant force in the industry, and just making fighters offers where they go, ‘Take it or leave it, what else are you going to do?’”
Rousey says the UFC stopped acting like the outsider
Rousey then aimed at how the company now sees itself inside the fight business.
She said, “It used to be that UFC was the best way to make money in combat sports. Now it’s becoming the worst place to make money in combat sports. It used to be anti-establishment, and now it’s become the establishment. And I’ve always been an ‘anti’ kind of bitch. [Laughs]”
She also said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a company woman, and was very grateful while I was there, but I feel like since they’ve taken the reigns away from Dana they’ve really lost their way, and they think that they’re too big to fail, and that they can just disappoint the fans over and over, and they don’t care how many casual fans they lose, because they’ve got their streaming, and ‘F*ck you, we got ours.’”
Rousey’s final point was directed at how the UFC values fighters.
She said, “I think they need to be reminded of the precariousness of their situation, and they need to start appreciating the fighters that give everything that they do any value at all. I think that they’ve forgotten that, and I’m coming to remind them.”
Watch the video from Rousey’s channel below.
The timing of the criticism matters because Rousey is heading into MVP MMA 1, where she is set to face Gina Carano in a comeback fight that has already stirred plenty of attention. The build has also overlapped with her recent back-and-forth in public with Kayla Harrison, which added even more noise around her return.
