Ronda Rousey, who flew into narcissistic rage when UFC had the audacity to pass on her comeback offer (because of this), thinks she’s getting revenge on her former employer by staging a competing fight card on May 16 in Los Angeles, the same night as UFC Vegas 116 at Meta Apex in Las Vegas.
But Rousey’s headlining fight against former Strikeforce attraction Gina Carano, which tops a Netflix lineup comprised of multiple UFC veterans and former champions, may have the opposite effect and leave jaded
fight fans with the feeling that “Rousey vs. Carano” was a colossal waste of time.
Seems to be a lot of that on Netflix these days.
“How many times are we going to walk away from a fight — like with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson — and kind of feel icky and wish that we didn’t watch it? I think we’re going to feel the same thing with this fight,” former UFC welterweight Matt Brown told The Fighter vs. The Writer. “Feel like we wasted our time. Maybe not feel icky but we’re going to feel like we wasted our time. How many times are we going to do that? At some point it’s going to play itself out. Probably if anything it’s all going to help the UFC. People are going to become fight fans and they’re like ‘I’m sick of this shit, can I just watch a real godd*amn fight? Oh yeah, we have a place that does that. It has all the best fights in the world. The UFC.‘”
Rousey, 39, is one of the biggest stars in the history of combat sports but hasn’t competed in nearly a decade. As for Carano, who turned 44 just last week, she’s been out of action since summer 2009. It’s also worth mentioning that “Rowdy” and “Conviction” are both coming off brutal knockout losses that sent them into retirement.
“I don’t know if Gina even really cares,” Brown added. “She hasn’t fought in 17 years. Clearly she was done fighting and had no intention to fight again and then she gets a call and they offer her enough money where she’s like ‘Okay, well, I’ll do that.’ It’s hard to believe it’s anything other than a paycheck. Is there anything that would get you interested? Even if they were at each other’s throats and talking all this shit, attacking each other’s families and throwing chairs at the press conference, you’d still be like ‘you two aren’t really going to give us that great of a fight.’ You can cat fight that shit all you want, there’s nothing exciting about this.”
Elsewhere on the card, Netflix found a 205-pounder who doesn’t want to cut weight anymore and booked him against former UFC champion Francis Ngannou, one of the hardest hitting punchers in MMA. In addition, a “gang of mongoloids” will fight each other for welterweight bragging rights.
So … who’s excited?
