If Ronda Rousey ever returns to MMA, it’d instantly become one of the sport’s biggest spectacles or at least, it would depending on who you ask.
Rousey’s fellow UFC Hall of Famer, Chael Sonnen, isn’t sold on the magnitude of a Rousey comeback fight, let alone the possibility of it happening. The former women’s UFC bantamweight champion recently returned to the gym to dip her toes back into MMA training. While there’s been no word on an official comeback, Rousey has seemingly teased the possibility while simultaneously pointing blame at the MMA community for the uncharitable ways in which she’s been received by the fan base since her title losses.
Speaking in-studio on Monday’s edition of “The Ariel Helwani Show,” Sonnen doubled down on his disbelief that a Rousey return is in the cards.
“Ronda will not fight, no,” Sonnen told Uncrowned. “First off, Ronda’s contract was so beautiful and called for so much money you had to main-event her, and she was not one of the best fighters in the world. When we called her the world champion, it’s because we had no idea who should be where. [The UFC women’s bantamweight division] was still getting formulated.
“She was announced at a press conference as a world champion. They handed her a belt. Not for nothing, imagine how bad that story could have gone. If she would have lost her first fight, she would actually be a world champion to never win a fight, which happens to be what Tom Aspinall is right now.”
Nearly a full decade has passed since Rousey, 38, last stepped foot in the Octagon. The Olympic medalist judoka transitioned into the world of pro-wrestling after MMA and enjoyed a healthy five-year run in the WWE from 2018-23, capturing virtually every women’s title in the company.
Rousey first entered the UFC as part of the Strikeforce purchase in 2011, having won and defended the Strikeforce bantamweight title with victories over former champs Miesha Tate and Sarah Kaufman. But after enjoying a meteoric start to her MMA career, Rousey’s 12-fight undefeated streak crashed to a halt against Holly Holm in 2015, and then again opposite Amanda Nunes in 2016. Following the back-to-back losses the two worst performances of her career Rousey left and never looked back, until recently.
“When she got ran out of the sport, she was still a top-seven, a top-eight [fighter] she could still beat a lot of girls,” Sonnen said. “Which, for most athletes, would be a lifelong dream. But you’re paying her so much money, you got to put her in main events. With main events, you got to put on world title fights, and she could not go with the top girls. She couldn’t even go five minutes with them.
“So to act like you’re going to bring her back [now], even in a scrub fight, nobody’s looking to see that. And the UFC does not have a history of that.”
“I don’t mean to hate on Ronda, I’m just trying to be a little more serious here,” Sonnen added. “It is very important to the people who tell the story, that Ronda Rousey is the reason women’s fighting is here and she’s the biggest star in the sport’s history that’s very important to the people that tell the story. There’s just nothing to support it.
“She doesn’t have a merchandise record. She doesn’t have a pay-per-view record; she’s not even in the top 10. She doesn’t have a live gate record; she’s not even in the top 10. She never did. It’s not like she had these records and I came along and took them, or Conor [McGregor] came along and took them. She never had them. There is no truth to the story of Ronda the star.”
While Rousey is not, in fact, in the estimated top 10 of UFC pay-per-view buyrates, her final two fights rank at No. 11 and 12 in promotional history, each drawing an estimated 1.1 million buys still the most ever for a UFC pay-per-view headlined by a women’s match. Additionally, at the time of UFC 193, her fight against Holm set the record for the largest-ever UFC attendance, drawing 56,214 spectators to Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium and a collecting a gate of $6.8 million.
The Holm loss should’ve set the stage for an epic Rousey rebound, but instead she disappeared from the public eye and went as far as to avoid all media appearances for her Nunes fight, both before the event and after. Rousey has since expressed her belief that the MMA fan base treated her poorly post-Holm.
Sonnen, however, isn’t buying it.
“[Rousey and I] are friends, but I still have a job to do, which is tell the story the way that it happened,” Sonnen said. “You were the most likely person to get on Ellen [Degeneres’] couch. We could’ve really used you. The moment the light dimmed on you, you left us. You could’ve still gone to Ellen’s couch and put over the next card.
“I’m no longer a fighter in the UFC. I used to make millions of dollars, I used to be the biggest draw, I used to have a lot of fun. I am none of those things anymore, but here I am telling you about [UFC 322]. I am trying, in my own way, to pitch in. You’re not paying me to be here I love the sport. The sport did something for me I owe it, I feel at least.
“She never even came back and made cameos. She never even came and sat in the front row [of an event]. She had nothing to do with us, and she wonders why people are going, ‘Good riddance to you.’ You said it to us.”