WHEN DANA WHITE declared in August that “Ronda Rousey’s return will be the biggest pay-per-view we’ve ever done”, the UFC president probably didn’t anticipate the media blackout that Rousey would insist on for her long-awaited comeback.
For most of 2016, the UFC didn’t have a timeframe for the return of the woman who was once the biggest star the sport of mixed martial arts had ever seen. All they knew was that she would eventually be back and the occasion would do big business. Money in the bank.
However, two days away from her headline bout against Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 in Las Vegas, Rousey’s first appearance in the octagon in 13 months hasn’t caused much of a stir — and that’s just how the 29-year-old wants it.
After transitioning to MMA six years ago, Rousey used the elite judo skills that earned her a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics to dominate the women’s bantamweight divisions in the Strikeforce and UFC promotions.
Heading into her title defence against Holly Holm at UFC 193 in Melbourne in November 2015, even Conor McGregor would have envied the superstardom that Rousey — fresh off her movie roles and an appearance at Wrestlemania — was enjoying. Undefeated with 12 wins, her last three UFC victories had taken her a combined time of just 64 seconds to achieve.
Despite her odds of 1/12, Rousey was knocked out in devastating fashion by Holm in the second round. Having embarked on a whirlwind media tour in the build-up to the fight to promote an event which set a new UFC attendance record [56,214], Rousey hasn’t been available to the MMA media since. As her comeback approaches, that hasn’t changed.
There have been some Instagram posts and sanitised interviews with the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon, but over a year on from her first setback in the octagon, Rousey continues to avoid questions about the fight and her handling of its aftermath.
The California native — whose face was obscured by a pillow as she was greeted by a small media presence at LAX Airport when she arrived back in Los Angeles after losing to Holm – spoke on The Ellen Show in February about struggling to come to terms with defeat.
“I’ve been trying to disappear as much as possible,” she said in a separate interview earlier this year. “I don’t look at articles, I don’t look at tags, I don’t look at comments. People on the internet are mostly evil. I just don’t want to accept any of that negativity.”
At last month’s weigh-ins for UFC 205 in New York, Rousey made an unexpected appearance for a staredown with Amanda Nunes, who has become the champion in the UFC’s women’s bantamweight division in Rousey’s absence thanks to July’s defeat of Miesha Tate, who had taken the belt from Holly Holm in March.
While Nunes was interviewed on stage by UFC commentator Joe Rogan, Rousey stormed off without saying a word. But her desire to avoid the spotlight went to another level recently when the accredited journalists who’ll be attending UFC 207 on Friday night were informed that Rousey won’t be available for any of the traditional fight week activities, such as the press conference and open workouts.
It’s an unprecedented arrangement for a UFC headliner, and one that Conor McGregor is likely to be paying close attention to. After refusing to travel to Las Vegas for a press conference back in April, McGregor was removed from the bill for UFC 200, where he was due to face Nate Diaz in a rematch.
“I respect Conor as a fighter and I like him as a person, but you can’t decide not to show up to these things. You have to do it,” Dana White said at the time. The stipulation in Rousey’s favour is perhaps not so surprising when it’s factored in that the WME-IMG talent agency, who are her representatives, have owned the UFC since their takeover in July.
Rousey’s words and actions don’t appear to reflect an individual who has dealt accordingly with a setback, which won’t come as a surprise to those who read her autobiography — My Fight/Your Fight, published last year — in which she gave an insight into how poorly she has handled defeat going back to her days as a child competing in judo.
“She had issues,” Dana White told FOX Sports in August. “Her biggest issues, in my opinion, were with the media. She just felt like the media completely turned on her when she lost. She felt attacked. She felt like these people in the media, that she gave three years of her life, cruising around, giving interviews to, completely turned on her when she lost.”
By affording Rousey the luxury of avoiding the media obligations that the other fighters on the UFC 207 card are contracted to fulfil, the UFC are likely to have left a substantial sum of money on the table. Out of sight, out of mind, Rousey’s return has received very little attention from the mainstream media — something which is sure to be reflected in the pay-per-view buys, despite the likelihood of Dana White delivering his par-for-the-course propaganda about another record-breaking event in Friday’s post-fight press conference.
When asked by journalists in Las Vegas about Rousey’s media blackout, Amanda Nunes said: “I don’t know what is wrong with this girl. I’m going to be honest with you.
“It’s good for me. I don’t like to do a lot of interviews. I like to train and then step in the cage and do my job. This is the thing that I like to do. I’m okay. It’s good for me that Ronda Rousey’s not doing anything. I can rest and focus on my training and losing weight and that’s it.
“I think the UFC would make me [do media], for sure. I think they would make me do it if I said, ‘I don’t want to do anything.’ They love Ronda Rousey. What are you going to do? Kick her ass. I will do it.”
According to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports, tickets are still available for Friday’s event at the 19,000-capacity T-Mobile Arena, while the gate receipts are expected to be in the region of $4.5million — $3m less than UFC 202: Diaz v McGregor II at the same venue in August and $5.2m less than UFC 200 a month earlier.
During a brief appearance on the latest episode of the Embedded series for UFC 207, which was released last night, Rousey said: “I don’t care about anything except for winning this fight. I’m not spending energy on anything else.”
That’s probably as much as we’re going to get from Ronda Rousey ahead of her bid to regain the UFC women’s bantamweight title. Physically she appears to be ready to make a statement, but will silence prove to be golden for the former champion?
