Holly Holm has accomplished a lot during her combat sports career, but like many great fighters, she’ll always be remembered for certain moments — and for her, none bigger than knocking out Ronda Rousey to become UFC champion back in 2015.
A massive underdog heading into the UFC 193 main event, Holm shut down Rousey from the first exchange before later delivering a vicious head kick heard around the world that crowned her as UFC champion. A decade later, Holm has long since moved on from that rivalry,
but Rousey has suddenly received newfound attention after returning to training, which immediately led to questions about a potential comeback.
“I don’t know if Ronda will ever fight again, but if he she does, I won’t be shocked,” Holm told MMA Fighting. “She was an Olympian. She was a champion. You don’t get to that point without having a passion for sports. A passion for what you want to do. If she’s back feeling that, that’d be great. I don’t think it will happen, but if it does, I mean if she comes back. I’m always open for a rematch, too. You never know what’s going to happen with life.
“But I think if she’s just enjoying training and coming back and has a little passion and just get back and train, that’s one thing. If she wants to fight, I never put anything out of the possibility. I feel like everything is possible, and if she does come back, well she fought before and she had passion for it before. Maybe she will find it again or if she has found that again and actually wants to compete with it again, who knows. Maybe she’s just enjoying training.”
While Rousey’s legacy as one of the greatest fighters in history has long been cemented, her run in the UFC came to an unceremonious end after she was knocked out by Holm and then suffered a similar fate in her final fight against Amanda Nunes.
Following those two losses, Rousey effectively disappeared from the sport before eventually re-emerging with a new career in professional wrestling after signing with WWE.
Lately, Rousey has voiced her displeasure with the treatment she’s received from fans, claiming that the fickle nature of the sport leads to unnecessary criticism from supposed supporters. Rousey believes it’s the same for any fighter dealing with a loss but Holm disagrees, especially when it comes to her one-time rival and UFC Hall of Famer.
“I think Ronda, she definitely didn’t like how her career ended, but she’s a lot responsible for that,” Holm explained. “Because she pulled herself away. You see some of these champions that are reigning champions, they run into a hiccup and they at least face the crowd, face the camera, face the fans, face it. I believe a little bit of higher respect in that aspect, and I think that a lot of fans were like she just took off.
“If she was to come back for a fight, people would cheer for her. I feel like she always feels like everybody’s against her, but she took herself away from the fans rather than them leaving her. Martial arts fans and fight fans, they can be brutal but also they’re fans, they’re fans of the sport. They realize things happen, not everything is always perfect, and I think if she would have faced it differently, no judgment on it, but I think if she would have faced it differently, it probably wouldn’t have been so negative as a whole in her own mind and how she felt.”
When Rousey lost to Holm, she immediately sought medical treatment but then never really addressed the fight or the knockout. Just over a year later for her return to action against Nunes, Rousey didn’t address the media during fight week or make appearances at the standard pre-fight festivities outside of the official weigh-ins.
Following that loss, Rousey once again darted back into the shadows.
Holm, who is scheduled for a boxing title fight against Stephanie Han this Saturday, understands Rousey’s desire to rectify past mistakes — if that’s what is actually happening — because she feels much the same way about her losses.
“Maybe she feels she wants to come back and make it right for her and feel better about it and maybe she’s got some itch in her that wants to get out and have a win,” Holm said. “Every athlete’s going to feel that and if she does, more power to her. We’ll see what happens.
“It’s one of those things, every loss I’ve had I wish I had the chance to avenge it. I feel like every fighter should be able to have that so who am I to say that somebody else can’t try and come back. I would never let that happen. I’d still get another win, that’s my whole goal. But yeah, every fight that I don’t have a victory on, I wish I could have had the chance to avenge it.”
Holm also warns Rousey that coming back for the sole purpose of erasing bad memories from the way her career ended probably isn’t the best way to approach a fight.
Instead, Holm hopes that if Rousey is actually contemplating a comeback, she’s doing it for the right reasons.
“I think that it definitely needs to be if she really wants to fight, not just because she wants it to be different,” Holm said. “Because it won’t be different if she doesn’t truly actually want to fight.”
