Khamzat Chimaev clearly isn’t a fan of Ronda Rousey or her comments aimed at the UFC after she signed a deal with Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions with a fight booked against Gina Carano on May 16.
Ever since the fight was announced, Rousey has repeatedly taken aim at her former promoters at the UFC, blasting the way fighters are treated with most of her disdain directed towards UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell, who handles much of the matchmaking duties these days. While she’s stopped
short of any negative comments towards Dana White, Rousey has slammed fighter salaries and almost made it her business to slam the UFC every chance she gets before her return in May.
But Chimaev wonders if Rousey would be capable of doing any of this without the UFC putting her on the map and likely making her a multi-millionaire before she initially retired from the sport in 2016.
“There never would have been Ronda Rousey without the UFC,” Chimaev said in a new video blog posted to his YouTube channel. “I hate this. If they pay good or they don’t pay good, who cares? When she was Olympic champ, what did she make then?”
Of course, Rousey has said in the past that she was actually living out of her car at one point while she chased her Olympic dream. She eventually captured a bronze medal in judo before making a full-time commitment to MMA.
At her peak, Rousey was one of the highest paid fighters on the UFC roster while also serving as a huge superstar for the promotion. Following a two-fight losing streak that led to her exit from the sport, Rousey transitioned over to professional wrestling where she worked with WWE.
It appeared Rousey was done fighting forever, especially after she revealed a severe history with concussions, but she later worked with doctors to discover the source of her issues that would allow her to resume her MMA career.
Rousey then approached White about booking the Carano fight in the UFC but she said after signing a seven year, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount that the organization didn’t want to pay her the guaranteed money she wanted and the deal fell apart.
Ever since then, Rousey has continuously bashed the UFC at every turn while touting the good work Most Valuable Promotions has done building the upcoming card that airs on Netflix.
But even that lineup outside of Rousey’s fight hasn’t impressed the UFC middleweight champion, who also unleashed on the fight between Mike Perry and Nate Diaz. In particular, Chimaev clearly doesn’t think much about Diaz, who he was actually scheduled to face at one point until he was unable to make the welterweight limit for their fight and he eventually moved on to face Kevin Holland instead at UFC 279.
“Robbie Lawler versus other guy, the Canadian from Canada [Rory MacDonald] — [Rory MacDonald made] spaghetti out of [Nate] Diaz,” Chimaev said. “He throws him there, threw him here. He threw him everywhere like spaghetti.”
While he doesn’t think much about Rousey vs. Carano or Diaz vs. Perry coming up on May 16, Chimaev is going to attempt to steal the show when he fights one week earlier on May 9 as one half of the UFC 328 main event where he faces Sean Strickland in a middleweight title defense.
