Ronda Rousey still plans on retiring from fighting after her big return bout on Netflix against Gina Carano on Saturday, May 16th. But she may end up sticking around in the sport as the promotional face of MVP MMA … just as a big ‘F–k you’ to UFC CBO Hunter Campbell.
Campbell is the guy running the day to day dealing at the top of the UFC now that CEO Dana White has taken a step back from negotiations and contracts. According to Rousey, Campbell has sucked the soul out of the UFC over the past few
years and is the reason things feel so stale and corporate. And after a dismissive meeting with Hunter, she wants to show the world how an MMA promotion is supposed to be run.
“Maybe after this, we will see. I could feasibly be the Dana of MVP MMA,” Rousey said on the Ariel Helwani show. “I could be the most powerful figure in the sports since Dana. Like, that’s that’s insane. That’s a goal that I never even would have thought to have had if I had done done nothing but win and win and win and win. And it’s not just for me, this isn’t like something I ever really inspired to do. I mean, a little bit would be kinda cool. But it’s giving fighters their power back, and I feel like that’s a role that I was meant to inhabit.”
Rousey pointed to her work helping set up the California fighters’ pension fund, which puts a dollar from every ticket sale into a fund for retired fighters in the state. More small actions like that, she argued, could make a huge improvement for combat sports athletes.
Having someone at the head of a competing organization putting fighters first could potentially push the UFC to start treating its fighters more fairly, and if that comes due to the power of Ronda Rousey’s spite, we’re all for it. And Rousey is extremely spiteful after her disastrous meeting with Hunter Campbell back in 2025.
“With Hunter, it was personal because he was just a f–king a–hole about it,” Rousey recalled. “He was just being such a chauvinist pr–k, and he was being so dismissive and just trying to get me and Gina to value ourselves less from the get-go and acting like this isn’t the greatest thing that has fallen to his lap … he was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know. You guys are just so much older, and I just don’t know how it’s gonna do.’ And I’m like, ‘Who the f–k is this guy?'”
“He wanted me and Gina to fight for the 145 title because it was vacant and it’s a way to retire the the belt,” she continued. “And Hunter’s like, ‘Yeah, then we can get rid of that division. And just the way that he spoke of it, like how dismissive he was and the disdain that he had for the the the fighters of that weight. And I’m like, motherf–ker, my husband’s 6 foot seven. My girls are not going to be 135. This is what you think … they can’t offer you anything, that they’re worthless, that they’re worth scoffing at.”
“It just really rubbed me the wrong way that this f–king guy is the person that’s going to be shepherding the company that I helped build. Like, that really, really rubbed me the wrong way.”
The ultimate confirmation that Campbell was a douche came from Rousey’s legendary mother AnnMaria De Mars, who was responsible for drilling Ronda’s ‘judo throw to armbar’ into an unstoppable weapon.
“I was like, ‘Mom, do you know who Hunter Campbell is?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s a f–king a–hole. Screw that guy.’ And I was like, ‘Why? Why don’t you like him?’ She goes, ‘He’d sell tickets to Christians being fed to lions.'”
Dr. De Mars is a member of the California State Athletic Commission and dealt with Campbell when he was doing the rounds getting Power Slap legalized.
“My mom said, ‘Honestly, I think this slap is everything that’s wrong with society.’ … As a response, he goes, ‘This is a really big opportunity for a lot of these people. A lot of these guys would just be doing meth in a trailer park if it wasn’t for this.’ That’s what you think of the fighters? Like, we are glorified bum fights to this guy.”
“This guy does not have a job because he’s good at it,” she concluded. “He has a job because he is Dana and Lorenzo’s lawyer’s son. He was a f–king intern when I was there before, and now he’s f–king coming up to me saying, ‘Oh, I don’t know how you and Gina are gonna do.’ Like, motherf–ker, I’m gonna put on a bigger fight with Gina than you have your entire f–king career. Keep trying to fail upwards, motherf–ker. Keep trying to suck the right dicks in the right order. I’m f–king coming for your job. You f–king pissed off the wrong bitch.”
“Then I told Dana, ‘The last thing you want me to do is leave this office pissed off with something to prove. Because this motherf–ker is pissing me off, and now I have something to prove.’ That’s why I’m gonna go do some ‘change the world’ s–t. And Dana’s like, ‘I just want you to make as much money as possible. You go do it.’ And I’m like, ‘I wanna do it.'”
At times like this you almost wish it was Ronda Rousey fighting Hunter Campbell in the cage on May 16th. But on the plus side, it sounds like Rousey could be bagging on Campbell for years to come, and it’s gonna be good to have someone who is vocal and can generates headlines every time UFC penny pinches on a massive fight to fatten TKO’s bottom line.
