Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano could have fought one another in a UFC pay-per-view, but Rousey said it wasn’t “meant to be.”
But Rousey did not shy away from sharp criticism aimed at TKO Group, the public company that now owns UFC.
Both Rousey and Carano appeared at a press conference Tuesday to promote their Netflix MMA fight on May 16 in Inglewood, Calif. The fight is under Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions banner; Rousey left UFC after 2016 and is making her return to mixed martial arts after a stint in WWE and a short retirement.
Rousey explained Tuesday that she proposed to UFC CEO Dana White the Carano fight as the last pay-per-view event before UFC switched to its new streaming deal with Paramount. White suggested New Year’s Day, but Carano said she needed more time to reach peak fighting condition.
“I think that was fate,” Rousey said. “It was meant to be. It was meant to push us into the other side.”
That’s because Rousey had a bone to pick with UFC’s new owners, which she was happy to do at the microphone Tuesday — saying they “need to be saved from themselves” and critiquing the low pay for most of the promotion’s fighters.
Rousey added that White was “legally beholden to the shareholders and to maximize shareholder value” and that TKO had “taken the reins of the company away from him.”
“It used to be that the UFC was the best place that you could come in combat sports to make a living and be paid fairly, and now it’s no longer, it’s one of the worst places to go,” Rousey said.
“It’s why so many of their top athletes are leaving to go and find pay elsewhere. It’s why their champions like Valentina (Shevchenko) are selling pictures of their t—ies on OnlyFans, you know? These people, a lot of them at the ground level, they can’t even support their families. They’re living poverty level, fighting full-time.”
UFC set a new precedent with its seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount for live rights, which Rousey was keen to highlight when arguing for better fighter pay.
“This company just got $7.7 billion. Like, there’s no reason that they can’t afford to pay their athletes at least a living wage, and not even that, to at least be able to match what these athletes are making in other sports,” she said.
“Why would they expect to get the best athletes and the best aspiring kids who want to be something, into MMA? Why not go into boxing, why not go into football, why not go into anything else? So they’re bleeding talent because of their short-term greed. They’re thinking about the next quarter, they’re thinking about the shareholders, and they’re not thinking about their responsibility to be stewards of the future of the sport.”
Rousey, 39, won her first 12 MMA fights and held the UFC women’s bantamweight belt before losing to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes in her last two fights.
Carano, 43, went 7-1 in her MMA career and hasn’t fought since 2009.
–Field Level Media
